Abstract
Soil fauna communities are major drivers of many forest ecosystem processes. Tree species diversity and composition shape soil fauna communities, but their relationships are poorly understood, notably whether or not soil fauna diversity depends on tree species diversity. Here, we characterized soil macrofauna communities from forests composed of either one or three tree species, located in four different climate zones and growing on different soil types. Using multivariate analysis and model averaging we investigated the relative importance of tree species richness, tree functional type (deciduous vs. evergreen), litter quality, microhabitat and microclimatic characteristics as drivers of soil macrofauna community composition and structure. We found that macrofauna communities in mixed forest stands were represented by a higher number of broad taxonomic groups that were more diverse and more evenly represented. We also observed a switch from earthworm-dominated to predator-dominated communities with increasing evergreen proportion in forest stands, which we interpreted as a result of a lower litter quality and a higher forest floor mass. Finally, canopy openness was positively related to detritivore abundance and biomass, leading to higher predator species richness and diversity probably through trophic cascade effects. Interestingly, considering different levels of taxonomic resolution in the analyses highlighted different facets of macrofauna response to tree species richness, likely a result of both different ecological niche range and methodological constraints. Overall, our study supports the positive effects of tree species richness on macrofauna diversity and abundance through multiple changes in resource quality and availability, microhabitat, and microclimate modifications.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study will be used for a data paper and then uploaded to the FunDivEUROPE data platform https://fundiv.befdata.biow.uni-leipzig.de/data.
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Acknowledgements
This research was part of the SoilForEUROPE project funded through the 2015–2016 BiodivERsA COFUND call for research proposals, with the national funders Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France), Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO, Belgium), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany), Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, Belgium), and The Swedish Research Council (FORMAS, Sweden). We thank the site managers Leena Finér with the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla), Bogdan Jaroszewicz with the University of Warsaw, Olivier Bouriaud with the Forest Research and Management Institute (ICAS), and Filippo Bussotti with University of Florence and associates, as well as the SoilForEUROPE consortium for their assistance with the soil sampling campaign (project website: https://websie.cefe.cnrs.fr/soilforeurope/). The authors thank Sylvain Coq, Alexandru Milcu, Marion Blache and Fiona Cornet for their precious help during the sampling campaign and lab analysis and Morgane Arietta Ganault for illustrations. We thank the two anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments improved the manuscript. This work was possible thanks to the grant awarded to Pierre Ganault from the “Ecole Doctorale GAIA” of the University of Montpellier.
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SH, BM, JN, TD participated in designing the sampling campaign, JW, LMG, LPDS, JN, SH, JFD, BM, TD participated in the sampling campaign, PG, JFD, EI, AP, CM and TD did the species identification and laboratory analysis, PG analyzed the data, PG and TD wrote the manuscript, all co-authors contributed in the writing of the manuscript.
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Ganault, P., Nahmani, J., Hättenschwiler, S. et al. Relative importance of tree species richness, tree functional type, and microenvironment for soil macrofauna communities in European forests. Oecologia 196, 455–468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04931-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04931-w