Description
Abstract:Soil is a heterogeneous and opaque environment that limit interactions between soil organisms. Trophic interactions determine the transformation of organic matter and the flux of energy across trophic levels. Biomarkers enabled to describe complex soil food webs with increasing precision, but what determine interactions remains largely unknown. Soil structure may be an important determinant of trophic interaction but was little studied yet. In addition, non-trophic interactions co-occur with trophic ones, and are also crucial to determine soil functioning, but trophic and non-trophic interactions rarely studied together in soils. For example, ecosystem engineers that modify the soil structure interact with numerous soil organisms by shaping their habitat, modifying their mobility and dispersal. Ecosystem engineers modify the pore structure and connectivity, and thus the renewal of gas and transfer of liquid phase, which is essential for the activity of soil organisms. Changes in soil pore connectivity is also thought to drive encounter probabilities between soil organisms, and thus trophic interactions.
To better understand what drives interactions in soil and how it affect soil functioning, a spatial approach is needed. We envision that interdisciplinary work at the interface between soil ecology and soil physics (that enable to describe the soil structure/microhabitats) will provide clues to advance this research frontier. This symposium aims to provide an overview of methods (experimental, modelling) to study trophic and non-trophic interactions in soil, and recent conceptual advance on the topic.
| Period | 2022 Nov 22 |
|---|---|
| Event title | SFE² GfÖ EEF Joint meeting, International Conference on Ecological Sciences : Ecology and Evolution: New perspectives and societal challenges |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Metz, FranceShow on map |