Ecological linkages between aboveground and belowground biota

Reviews the two-way influences between the plants above ground and the organisms below it: how plant litter quality and root inputs shape soil communities, and how soil organisms in turn affect plant nutrition, composition and productivity.

Studied in

Plantae, Fungi, Animalia, Bacteria

Sample size

review across soil-plant interaction studies

Above-ground and below-ground communities are reciprocally linked. Plants determine the quantity and chemistry of the resources soil organisms receive; soil organisms determine nutrient availability, root health and which plants do well.

• A review; the strength of individual linkages varies greatly between systems.
• Below-ground communities are far less completely described than above-ground ones, so the asymmetry in knowledge is real.

• Detritus

  A rabbit population responds to being eaten. A pile of dead leaves does not. That asymmetry — a resource delivered from outside, which cannot decline in response to its consumers — changes how the whole web behaves.

• The soil food web

  Neither "every soil species matters" nor "soil organisms are interchangeable" is right. Broad jobs like respiring carbon have many organisms able to do them; narrow ones like nitrification have very few.