The relationship between soil macrofauna biodiversity and ecosystem services delivery across South American neotropical rainforests.
FAUNASERVICES will synthesize for the first time the relationships between soil biodiversity – soil macrofauna and earthworm communities – and the delivery of five key ecosystem services that are critical in Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest, two major Biomes in the South American Neotropics:
1) Water percolation and retention in soils
2) Plant productivity
3) Nutrient cycling: N and P availability
4) Organic matter stocks in the topsoil
5) Biological control capacity
FAUNASERVICES will use a large database to explore these relationships in a variety of natural and anthropized land use systems that are dominant in the neotropics. The project will identify hot spots of soil biodiversity, endemicity and soil invasions, together with their associated ecosystem (dis)services delivery.
This will allow FAUNASERVICES to define regions of high priority for conservation of soil biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery in South America.
The FAUNA SERVICES group during its first workshop in July 2023
Researchers
PIs:
Miguel COOPER – University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) ; Jerôme MATHIEU – Sorbonne Université (France)
Post-doc:
Wilian Demétrio
George BROWN – Embrapa Forestry (Brazil); Marie Bartz – University of Coimbra (Portugal); Thibaud DECAENS – Université de Montpellier (France); Zoë LINDO – Western University (Canada); Clara Pena VEGAS – Amazonian Scientific Research Institute – SINCHI (Colombia); Benjamin PEY – ENSAT Toulouse (France); Carlos PEREZ – University of East Anglia (UK); Lucilla VARGAS – Embrapa Forestry (Brazil).
