The large numbers of cryptic organisms and the different hierarchical levels of diversity in soil food webs present a major challenge for characterizing and understanding how soil organism biodiversity influences ecosystem processes. However, a hierarchical approach to understanding and assessing the role of biodiversity provides a structure for approaching this complex problem. Novel developments in the analyses of soil biodiversity promise to provide new insights into the enormous genetic and taxonomic diversity belowground and the divergent niches occupied by soil organisms (Taylor et al., 2014 and Delgado-Baquerizo et al., 2016). However, large-scale molecular sequencing alone (e.g. Wu et al., 2011 and Tedersoo et al., 2014) will not improve our understanding of the role of biodiversity in driving soil ecosystem processes. We advocate prioritizing enhancing our understanding of the functional roles of soil organisms (moving beyond body size groups), coupled with a mechanistic understanding that manipulates biodiversity at different hierarchical levels: within- and across energy channels, trophic groups, functional groups, taxa, and genetic differences.
Acknowledgements
P.K. acknowledges the Swedish Research Council Formas (grant no. 2013-11041-25006-23) for financial support and H.T. acknowledges support from the US National