Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2009
Introduction
Trophic interactions in soil form the basis of virtually all terrestrial life. Without the recycling of plant materials produced above the ground, and the mineralization of the nutrients therein, plant life would cease quickly and with it the whole above-ground food-web. It is surprising therefore that, in comparison to aquatic food-webs and food-webs above the ground, the below-ground community has received little attention. One of the major intentions in writing this review was to emphasize this gap and to outline that the lack of knowledge on food-web interactions in below-ground systems is a major constraint in current ecological thinking.
We will stress in this review that below-ground systems are unique in several respects and that, due to this uniqueness, the understanding of interactions in below-ground systems may significantly enrich the way we perceive nature. Since from the energetic perspective the below-ground decomposer system is far more important than the herbivore system above the ground, it is certainly necessary to include the peculiarities of below-ground food-webs into ecological thought. Although this has been realized by various people (Beare et al., 1995; Wardle and Giller, 1996; Bengtsson, 1998; Young and Ritz, 1998; Scheu et al., 1999b; Villani et al., 1999; Wall and Moore, 1999), the bias in terrestrial ecology towards above-ground systems has experienced little change.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.