Abstract:
Soils harbor a substantial fraction of the world’s biodiversity, contributing to many crucial
ecosystem functions. It is thus essential to identify general macroecological patterns related
to the distribution and functioning of soil organisms to support their conservation and consideration
by governance. These macroecological analyses need to represent the diversity of
environmental conditions that can be found worldwide. Here we identify and characterize
existing environmental gaps in soil taxa and ecosystem functioning data across soil macroecological
studies and 17,186 sampling sites across the globe. These data gaps include
important spatial, environmental, taxonomic, and functional gaps, and an almost complete
absence of temporally explicit data. We also identify the limitations of soil macroecological
studies to explore general patterns in soil biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships,
with only 0.3% of all sampling sites having both information about biodiversity and function,
although with different taxonomic groups and functions at each site. Based on this information,
we provide clear priorities to support and expand soil macroecological research.
