Organized Oral Session
Monica Farfan
School of Global Enrivonmental Sustainability, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
Monica Farfan
School of Global Enrivonmental Sustainability, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
Soil biodiversity and the interactions between soil fauna, flora, and microbes drive many of the ecosystem processes that support life on earth. The importance of Interactions within the soil biodiversity community in assessing of global change effects is often overlooked because the organisms that inhabit soils and their functions are still being discovered. The topic of protection of soil biodiversity, and its functions and interactions, is a timely and salient subject due to the recently released policy documents (UN-FAO - “State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity: Status, Challenges, and Potentialities” and Outcome document “Keep Soil Alive. Protect Soil Biodiversity”) and because it is one of the foci of the European Commission’s “Green Deal for Europe”. The Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative seeks to encourage the inclusion of soil biodiversity research that aims to close the gap in our knowledge of how soil fauna, flora and microbes interact in policy and land management. Here we propose a session with a diverse group of researchers with the goals of, first, giving a brief introduction on the history of network analysis in soil ecology to familiarize those new to the subject (speaker Bennett). Secondly, we showcase recent research into the ecological networks of the sometimes cryptic belowground systems, from fauna (speakers Baines and Lindo) to microorganisms (speakers Banerjee, Hawkes, and Wagg), with a concentration in North America. Thirdly, we seek to engage a broad range of ecological researchers by not only presenting research results, but emphasizing HOW researchers are evaluating their community networks and interactions as well as choosing their methods of evaluation based on their questions and data. In this way, soil communities are the framework in which network analysis as a whole is approached as a topic in addition to these interactions being of critical importance in understanding our changing planet. This session will be of interest to anyone pursuing research on a community network from the macro- or micro-world.
Presenting Author: Alison Bennett – The Ohio State University
Presenting Author: Samiran Banerjee – North Dakota State University
Presenting Author: Christine Hawkes – North Carolina State University
Presenting Author: Michala Phillips – USGS, Southwest Biological Science Center
Co-author: Aral C. Greene – University of California, Riverside
Co-author: Courtney M. Currier – Arizona State University
Co-author: Sasha C. Reed – U.S. Geological Survey
Co-author: Peter M. Homyak – University of California, Riverside
Presenting Author: Zoe Lindo – University of Western Ontario
Co-author: Carlos Barreto – Western University
Co-author: Robert Buchkowski – Atlantic Forestry Centre
Presenting Author: Celina Baines – McGill University
Co-author: Bronwyn Rayfield – ApexRMS
Co-author: Luis J. Gilarranz – Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
Co-author: Andrew Gonzalez – McGill University