Speaker
Description
The combined impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss are reshaping how ecosystems function, but their interplay remains unclear. One critical gap in our understanding is the role of soil fauna biodiversity in helping ecosystems withstand droughts driven by climate change. To address this, we conducted a three-year ecotron experiment simulating a Mediterranean forest ecosystem. Our goal was to determine whether decomposer functional diversity (FD) affects ecosystem-level carbon fluxes under both normal and intensified summer drought conditions. We found that, in the second and third years, net ecosystem CO2 exchange and gross primary productivity declined by as much as 30% when functional diversity was low and drought was intensified, compared to high FD under normal conditions. However, the presence of endogeic earthworms had an even more pronounced effect. These earthworms boosted drought-period net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and gross primary productivity (GPP) by 20 to 32%, counteracting the drought-induced reductions in annual cumulative carbon fluxes. Our results highlight the pivotal—and often overlooked—role of soil fauna diversity, particularly key functional groups, in regulating ecosystem carbon sequestration amid climate change.
| Are you participating to the "AnaEE Environmental Rising Star Award "? | No |
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