Contact:

Francois Buscot, Project P.I.
Stefan Scheu, Project P.I.

Rationale

The focus of this subproject is to understand interaction webs and effect of the belowground biota for ecosystem processes. This project studies the effects of the soil fauna on soil structure, nutrient mineralisation and decomposition processes. Further, the role of mycorrhizal fungi and soil fungi in the ecosystem are studied..

There are four major goals:

• Subproject aims at synthesizing data on the structure of the soil animal community in a plant diversity gradient for building a soil food web model and integrating the belowground and aboveground food web in a single model.
• Of special interest are the interrelationships between the structure of the belowground community (soil animals and microbial parameters for bacteria and fungi) and parameters measured at the field site (e.g. data on nutrient concentrations and fluxes, data on herbivory, data on biomass and structure of the root system).
• The subproject investigates on the relationship between plant biodiversity and diversity and functioning of soil and mycorrhizal fungi.
• Further there are experimental manipulations of the belowground animal community for investigating the response of the above-ground community (e.g. to reduced earthworm density, reduced belowground insect density and reduced nematode density in a plant diversity gradient).

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