How you look and what you eat below ground?

Anton POTAPOV

University of Göttingen, Germany

Life in soil is extremely diverse but poorly understood. There are marked differences in food-web organization between soil and other ecosystem types. To understand the interactions between organisms in soil and functioning of this ecosystem I’m applying instrumental analyses, primary stable isotopes. I’m keen to find out, how can we predict these interactions. In fact, we can learn much from traits such as body size and morphology. I will demonstrate, how soil food webs are organized (based on stable isotope analysis), how body size may shape soil food webs, from small to large organisms, and how general morphological adaptations, conserved through the evolutionary history, constrain the trophic niches in modern communities.

anton.potapov@biologie.uni-goettingen.de

@AntonCollembola