Data/hora: 20/06/2024 03:24:33

Biblioteca(s): 	Embrapa Florestas.	
Data corrente: 	15/09/2008	
Data da última atualização: 	15/09/2008	
Autoria: 	ANDERSON, J. M.	
Título: 	Why care about soil animals?	
Ano de publicação: 	2008	
Fonte/Imprenta: 	In: INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON SOIL ZOOLOGY, 15; INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON APTERYGOTA, 12., 2008, Curitiba. Biodiversity, conservation and sustainabele management of soil animal: abstracts. Colombo: Embrapa Florestas. Editors: George Gardner Brown; Klaus Dieter Sautter; Renato Marques; Amarildo Pasini. 1 CD-ROM.	
Idioma: 	Inglês	
Conteúdo: 	Our appreciation of soil animals can be described in terms of their existence, utility and functional
values.
The existence values embrace aesthetic or moral reasons for conserving below-ground
biodiversity. Most of us study soil animals because their fascinating diversity of species, forms,
functions and adaptations to their environment. Paradoxically, the identification and protection
of rare species of soil invertebrates has rarely been a criterion for avoiding changes in land use
and management; unlike some small, equally obscure and non-charismatic species living above
ground.
Utility, or direct use values, have been investigated more extensively for fungi and bacteria than
for soil invertebrates. However, traditional remedies, novel enzymes and pharmaceutical
compounds have been resourced from earthworms, termites and other groups, specific
nematodes are used commercially for biological control of slugs and weevil grubs, and gut
symbionts have provided microbial strains with novel properties for biotechnology.
The functional importance of soil invertebrates in ecosystem processes has been a major focus
of research in recent decades. Here it is important to differentiate between ecosystem functions
(processes that maintain terrestrial systems) and ecosystem services on which we place
economic values. I suggest that even for ecosystem engineers, such as earthworms and termites,
it is rarely possible to specifically identify the role of soil invertebrates as rate determinants of
ecosystem functioning. This is because of the many other mechanisms and pathways regulating
soil processes, and the strongly buffering action of biophysical properties (soil organic matter
and ion exchange capacity) that confer resistance and resilience to the ecosystem. We know,
however, from micro- and meso-cosm studies that soil animals have significant direct and indirect
effects on microbial processes. But, as with microbial diversity, soil animal community
composition is rarely invoked as a rate determinant at the plot or hectare scale where carbon,
nutrient and decomposition rates are related to more distal variables such as climate and edaphic
factors. However, situations are described where the activities of functional groups of soil animals,
and even species, are synchronised in space or time by plant events, resource inputs, seasonality
or other purturbations to the system, and their emergent effects are detectable as higher order
controls.	
Categoria do assunto: 	--	
Registro original: 	Embrapa Florestas (CNPF)	
Exemplares: 	CNPF - (43564-1) - UPE - PL - -- - CD0305 -  -  - DIS