Soil biota are thought to harbour a large part of the world’s biodiversity and to govern
processes that are regarded as globally important components in the recycling of organic
matter, energy and nutrients. Moreover, they are also key players in several supporting and
regulating ecosystem services [1]. Furthermore, they are key components of soil food webs.
Rough estimates of soil biodiversity indicate several thousand invertebrate species per site,
as well as the relatively unknown levels of microbial and protozoan diversity. Soil
ecosystems generally contain a large variety of animals, such as nematodes,
microarthropods (Figure 1) such as mites and Collembola, Symphyla, Chilopoda,
Pauropoda, enchytraeids and earthworms (Figure 2). In addition, a large number of mesoand
macrofauna species (mainly arthropods such as beetles, spiders, diplopods, chilopods
and pseudoscorpion (Figure 3) , as well as snails) live in the uppermost soil layers, the soil
surface and the litter layer.