Links and Fluxes in Forest Soil Micro-Food Webs Under Different Land Use Intensity

Their great abundance, coupled with high species and trophic diversity, make nematode a key group in soil food webs. This project investigates land use effects on the nematode fauna in 75 forest plots of the three exploratories in the working packages: (1) Nematode communities as indicators for food web conditions, (2) Links between microbial and microfaunal webs, and (3) Biodiversity assembly after disturbance. The work is carried out in cooperation with other soil animal projects, and complements the faunal analysis. Density and structure of nematode populations are determined and related to their functional roles; key groups in microbial webs (e.g. actinobacteria, fungi, algae) are assessed by lipid biomarkers. Nematodes will serve as entry-level indicators for resource allocation, partitioning and transfer in the micro-food web as modulated by forest land use intensity