Linking global soil biodiversity to ecosystem functioning

Despite recent achievements, soil macro-ecologists are still dealing with major challenges that need to be addressed to advance this field of research. In addition to existing data gaps, there is a need to explore the temporal dynamics of soil biodiversity and functions across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This work needs to integrate different facets of biodiversity (i.e., variability in body size, life-history traits, species identities, and groups of taxa) and their relationships to multiple ecosystem functions. To verify causal relationships, soil macro-ecology should be paired with local and globally distributed experiments.