In addition to its usefulness for measuring soil quality, FAI may provide valuable information for linking functional traits of soil fauna and the belowground environmental condition.
This composite index allowed scoring land uses and agricultural practices on the base of simple morphological traits of soil animals without identification at species level.
We suggest this may be the case for the trait of extractable soil aluminum in the current study, as it had a K statistic of less than unity (K = 0.80 with marginal significance of p = 0.09; Table 2) and node-specific results from the AOT showed a number of significant nodes associated with high aluminum.
We identified earthworm "response" traits that had been selected and assessed consequences of these changes on effects of earthworm communities (via their "effect" traits) on soil processes and ecosystem services.
We studied the physicochemical and hydrological traits of five soil covers (unblended TEC topsoil; TEC topsoil mixed with waste rock; fines; fines mixed with waste rock, and waste rock) with two TEC topsoil sources (plateau and hillslope).
(ii) Conversely, evolutionary theories and new evolutionary models applied to soil issues are likely to lead to predictions on the way biological organisms have evolved and thus on the biological traits of present soil organisms and the type of interactions that link them.
The aim of this study was (i) to determine the connection between earthworm traits and indicators of soil ecosystem services and (ii) to identify earthworm "response" traits, which are selected by the landscape or changes in the soil, and "effect" traits, which contribute to soil processes.
Indeed, studies of grassland plant biodiversity on soil properties frequently observed stronger effects of plant community composition than species richness, indicative of the importance of plant species traits for soil and ecosystem properties [13], [14].
The data from this study form the basis for future research leading to selection and breeding for suitable root traits for soil constraints and provides information for alleviating management of compacted soil in deep sandy soils.
We compared the influence of the microbial community composition and the environmental conditions for the functioning – microbial growth and respiration – and trait distribution – bacterial pH tolerance – of soil microorganisms across a pH gradient.
