Description:
Soil animals affect major ecosystem processes, such as nutrient cycling and soil formation, and thereby play a central role in aboveground - belowground interactions. Soil animal food webs are complex trophic networks comprising a diversity of species and resources. Due to the fact that soil animals are exceptionally diverse and feeding interactions in the soil habitat are obscured from direct observation, the structure and functioning of soil animal food webs are little understood. The present thesis focuses on the composition and trophic ecology of the soil animal food web of Central Euro...