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Full Description
Most of the earth's terrestrial species live in the soil. These organisms, which include many thousands of species of fungi and nematodes, shape aboveground plant and animal life as well as our climate and atmosphere. Indeed, all terrestrial ecosystems consist of interdependent aboveground and belowground compartments. Despite this, aboveground and belowground ecology have been conducted largely in isolation. This book represents the first major synthesis to focus explicitly on the connections between aboveground and belowground subsystems--and their importance for community structure and ecosystem functioning. David Wardle integrates a vast body of literature from numerous fields--including population ecology, ecosystem ecology, ecophysiology, ecological theory, soil science, and global-change biology--to explain the key conceptual issues relating to how aboveground and belowground communities affect one another and the processes that each component carries out.
He then applies these concepts to a host of critical questions, including the regulation and function of biodiversity as well as the consequences of human-induced global change in the form of biological invasions, extinctions, atmospheric carbon-dioxide enrichment, nitrogen deposition, land-use change, and global warming. Through ambitious theoretical synthesis and a tremendous range of examples, Wardle shows that the key biotic drivers of community and ecosystem properties involve linkages between aboveground and belowground food webs, biotic interaction, the spatial and temporal dynamics of component organisms, and, ultimately, the ecophysiological traits of those organisms that emerge as ecological drivers. His conclusions will propel theoretical and empirical work throughout ecology.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: The Soil Food Web: Biotic Interactions and Regulators 7 Controls: Top Down, Bottom Up, and Productivity 9 Regulation by Resources and Predation in Soil Food Webs 16 Litter Transformers, Ecosystem Engineers, and Mutualisms 37 The Functionality of Soil Food Webs 43 Stability and Temporal Variability 48 Synthesis 53 Chapter 3: Plant Species Control of Soil Biota and Processes 56 Plant Species Effects on Soil Biota 57 Links among Plant Species, Soil Biota, and Soil Processes 68 Temporal and Spatial Variability 73 Plant Traits, Strategies, and Ecophysiological Constraints 83 Soil Biotic Responses to Vegetation Succession 97 Synthesis 103 Chapter 4: Belowground Consequences of Aboveground Food Web Interactions 105 Individual Plant Effects 106 Dung and Urine Return 114 Effects of Palatability Differences among Plant Species 117 Spatial and Temporal Variability 130 Consequences of Predation of Herbivores 132 Transport of Resources by Aboveground Consumers 134 Synthesis 136 Chapter 5: Completing the Circle: How Soil Food Web Effects Are Manifested Aboveground 138 The Decomposer Food Web 140 Nitrogen Transformations 152 Microbial Associates of Plant Roots 157 Root Herbivores 169 Physical Effects of Soil Biota 173 Soil Biotic Effects on Aboveground Food Webs 175 Synthesis 181 Chapter 6: The Regulation and Function of Biological Diversity 183 Assessment of Soil Diversity 184 Stress and Disturbance as Controls of Soil Diversity 187 Biotic Controls of Diversity 194 The Enigma of Soil Diversity 203 Diversity of Soil Organisms over Larger Spatial Scales 205 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function 209 Synthesis 236 Chapter 7: Global Change Phenomena in an Aboveground-Belowground Context 239 Species Losses and Gains 240 Land Use Changes 253 Carbon Dioxide Enrichment and Nitrogen Deposition 265 Global Climate Change 281 Synthesis 292 Chapter 8: Underlying Themes 295 References 309 Index 387
