Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s).Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change.Peer reviewe

Soil Protein as a Rapid Soil Health Indicator of Potentially Available Organic Nitrogen

Increased interest in practical, routine evaluation of soil health has created a need for rapid and inexpensive indicators that reflect soil nitrogen (N) status. Here we propose a soil protein measurement as an indicator of a functionally relevant and sensitive pool of organic N that can be rapidly quantified in soil testing laboratories. The procedure is based on a method that was historically used to measure “glomalin,” a pool putatively of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal origin. Laboratory validation experiments demonstrate that the procedure extracts proteins from a wide range of sources, not just glomalin, and that continued use of the term is inaccurate and limits the application of the method. Therefore, we propose that the pool of proteins extracted by this method can be viewed more broadly as a soil health indicator that reflects the primary pool of organically bound N in soil and thus as potentially available organic N. We provide a laboratory protocol that details autoclaving soil in a neutral sodium citrate buffer solution followed by clarification and protein quantification steps

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Data collated from data provided by original data collectors or from data provided within published articles. The MetaData.csv provides information on each of the original data sources, including bibliographic information about the original article and information on how many sites were sampled. The SiteData.csv gives site-level variables, such as geographic coordinates, the environmental parameters as well as site-level community metrics (species richness, total abundance and total biomass). The SppOccData.csv provides the observation level data - the occurrence, abundance and/or biomass of individual species/morpho-species/life-stage at a particular site. Not every data source contained such observation level data. Metadata information about the variables in each file are provided in the files MetaData_info.csv, SiteData_info.csv and SppOccData_info.csv, respectively. All files provided use the character encoding UTF-8, and missing values are represented by "NA"

Global distribution of earthworm diversity

Soil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, their distribution, and the threats affecting them. We compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries as a basis for predicting patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, and biomass. We found that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, displaying patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms. However, high species dissimilarity across tropical locations may cause diversity across the entirety of the tropics to be higher than elsewhere. Climate variables were found to be more important in shaping earthworm communities than soil properties or habitat cover. These findings suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and for the functions they provide.status: publishe

Global distribution of earthworm diversity

Soil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, their distribution, and the threats affecting them. We compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries as a basis for predicting patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, and biomass. We found that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, displaying patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms. However, high species dissimilarity across tropical locations may cause diversity across the entirety of the tropics to be higher than elsewhere. Climate variables were found to be more important in shaping earthworm communities than soil properties or habitat cover. These findings suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and for the functions they provide

Global distribution of earthworm diversity

International audienceSoil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, distribution, and the threats affecting them. Here, we compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries to predict patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, and biomass. We identified that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms. However, diversity across the entirety of the tropics may be higher than elsewhere, due to high species dissimilarity across locations. Climate variables were more important in shaping earthworm communities than soil properties or habitat cover. These findings suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and therefore the functions they provide

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s).Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change.Peer reviewe

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change