Communities and Ecosystems

David A. Wardle is Professor of Soil and Plant Ecology at the University of Sheffield and has published widely on biotic interactions, biodiversity, and soil biology.

• Acknowledgments vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: The Soil Food Web: Biotic Interactions and Regulators 7 Controls: Top Down, Bottom Up, and Productivity 9 Regulation by Resources and Predation in Soil Food Webs 16 Litter Transformers, Ecosystem Engineers, and Mutualisms 37 The Functionality of Soil Food Webs 43 Stability and Temporal Variability 48 Synthesis 53 Chapter 3: Plant Species Control of Soil Biota and Processes 56 Plant Species Effects on Soil Biota 57 Links among Plant Species, Soil Biota, and Soil Processes 68 Temporal and Spatial Variability 73 Plant Traits, Strategies, and Ecophysiological Constraints 83 Soil Biotic Responses to Vegetation Succession 97 Synthesis 103 Chapter 4: Belowground Consequences of Aboveground Food Web Interactions 105 Individual Plant Effects 106 Dung and Urine Return 114 Effects of Palatability Differences among Plant Species 117 Spatial and Temporal Variability 130 Consequences of Predation of Herbivores 132 Transport of Resources by Aboveground Consumers 134 Synthesis 136 Chapter 5: Completing the Circle: How Soil Food Web Effects Are Manifested Aboveground 138 The Decomposer Food Web 140 Nitrogen Transformations 152 Microbial Associates of Plant Roots 157 Root Herbivores 169 Physical Effects of Soil Biota 173 Soil Biotic Effects on Aboveground Food Webs 175 Synthesis 181 Chapter 6: The Regulation and Function of Biological Diversity 183 Assessment of Soil Diversity 184 Stress and Disturbance as Controls of Soil Diversity 187 Biotic Controls of Diversity 194 The Enigma of Soil Diversity 203 Diversity of Soil Organisms over Larger Spatial Scales 205 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function 209 Synthesis 236 Chapter 7: Global Change Phenomena in an Aboveground-Belowground Context 239 Species Losses and Gains 240 Land Use Changes 253 Carbon Dioxide Enrichment and Nitrogen Deposition 265 Global Climate Change 281 Synthesis 292 Chapter 8: Underlying Themes 295 References 309 Index 387

"Highly recommended for all ecologists."--Choice "I suspect that this book, if for nothing else than for the sheer weight of its intellectual synthesis, will be among [the] classics for many years to come."--Patrick Bohlen, Ecology