Julia Seeber

Eurac Research · Institute for Alpine Environment

Background Metabarcoding targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region is commonly used to characterize fungal communities of various environments. Given their size and complexity, raw ITS sequences are necessarily processed and quality-filtered with bioinformatic pipelines. However, such pipelines are not yet standardized, especially for...

More than half of all life on Earth lives belowground and regulates a wide range of ecosystem functions via their diverse trophic interactions. However, information on how trophic diversity of soil animals varies across functional groups and major environmental gradients is lacking. Here, we use stable isotope analysis (13C/12C and 15N/14N ratios)...

Mountain ecosystems play an important role globally as centers of biodiversity and in providing ecosystem services to lowland populations, but are influenced by multiple global change drivers such as climate change, nitrogen deposition, or altered disturbance regimes. As global change is accelerating and the consequences for humans and nature are i...

EuropaBON EBV workflow templates The information provided here represents the EBV workflow templates collected during the EuropaBON online workshop on Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) workflows from 22–24 February 2023. The templates were designed to capture comprehensive descriptions about the three workflow components (data collection and s...

Metataxonomic studies of ecosystem microbiotas require the simultaneous processing of samples with contrasting physical and biochemical traits. However, there are no published studies of comparisons of different DNA extraction kits to characterize the microbiotas of the main components of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, and to our knowledge for the f...

The information represents the EBV workflow templates collected during the EuropaBON online workshop on Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) workflows from 22–24 February 2023. The templates were designed to capture comprehensive descriptions about the three workflow components (data collection and sampling, data integration, and modelling) that...

Grasslands, especially in mountainous areas, are crucial for pollinators at all elevations. Studying the potential additive or interactive effects of land-use intensity and elevation on wild bee communities is essential amid global changes. This PhD project aims to understand how these factors influence wild bee communities, their functional and ta...

Animal stoichiometry affects fundamental processes ranging from organismal physiology to global element cycles. However, it is unknown whether animal stoichiometry follows predictable scaling relationships with body mass and whether adaptation to life on land or water constrains patterns of elemental allocation. To test both interspecific and intra...

Biodiversity loss is a global issue, particularly in mountain regions, where land-use/land-cover and climate change dramatically impact on species and communities. Sound ecological research and up-to-date information on biodiversity are needed to support conservation efforts. However, this information is often difficult and costly to obtain. Theref...

Springtails (Collembola) inhabit soils from the Arctic to the Antarctic and comprise an estimated ~32% of all terrestrial arthropods on Earth. Here, we present a global, spatially-explicit database on springtail communities that includes 249,912 occurrences from 44,999 samples and 2,990 sites. These data are mainly raw sample-level records at the s...

There are few studies of ground-dwelling invertebrates from alpine grasslands, often with only one or a few samplings per growing season. However, to get a comprehensive picture of the faunal community present, sampling over a full season is required. Here we present data on ground-dwelling macro-invertebrate communities from two differently manage...

Despite the importance of healthy soils for human livelihood, wellbeing, and safety, current gaps in our knowledge and understanding of biodiversity in soil are numerous, undermining conservation efforts. These gaps are particularly wide in mountain regions where healthy soils are especially important for human safety and yet evidence is accumulati...

In mountain regions, available agricultural land is often limited by the rugged topography and therefore an efficient and small-scale land use is needed to ensure food and fodder security. In the European Alps, mountain meadows at mid-elevations were created in medieval times by clearing and are therefore often still embedded in forest areas. The t...

Although the number of studies on soil and ground-dwelling fauna is constantly increasing, only few focus on high alpine areas. We conducted a comprehensive survey of ground-dwelling invertebrates in (high) alpine dry pastures along three elevational gradients (1500 to 3000 m a.s.l.) in the LT(S)ER area ‘Val Mazia/Matschertal’, South Tyrol, Italy....

The Alpine landscape has undergone significant transformation over millions of years due to both abiotic and biotic processes, as well as human activities in recent millennia. This European Mountain region is a vital habitat for numerous endemic species adapted to extreme environments, making it an important biodiversity hotspot. However, human act...

Biodiversity loss is a global issue, particularly in mountain regions, where land-use/land-cover and climate change are its main drivers. To support conservation efforts, robust ecological research and recent up-to-date information on biodiversity are needed. However, obtaining this information is often difficult and costly. Therefore, bioindicator...

Invertebrates an the Natura 2000 site Gadental, Biosphere Reserve Großes Walsertal (Vorarlberg, Austria). Results of the first inatura science camp. The first inatura science camp took place from Sep. 1 st to 4 th , 2022 in the Gadental, core area of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Großes Walsertal in Vorarlberg (Austria). Supported by the inatura, th...

Background Metataxonomic studies of ecosystem microbiotas require the simultaneous processing of samples with contrasting physical and biochemical traits to guarantee that diversity indices are comparable. However, DNA extraction can induce undesired bias in the microbial community composition and hamper the detection of meaningful biological patte...

Understanding the main drivers of biodiversity loss in Europe's agricultural landscapes has been a research priority in the last decades. One of the most important factors promoting biodiversity in farmed landscapes is habitat heterogeneity, which has often proved crucial for avian species and communities. Birds are highly sensitive to environmenta...

The #AlpSoil_Lab investigates the communities of soil fauna in (high) alpine soil ecosystems. We assess not only their number and diversity, but also their functional and life-history characteristics. In this way, we contribute to closing crucial gaps in our knowledge.

Metataxonomy has become the standard for characterizing the diversity and composition of microbial communities associated with multicellular organisms and their environment. Currently available protocols for metataxonomy assume a uniform DNA extraction, amplification and sequencing efficiency for all sample types and taxa. It has been suggested tha...

On initiative of the government of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Südtirol (Province Bolzano-Südtirol, Region Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy) a biodiversity monitoring program was established, starting with sampling on terrestrial sites in 2019 and on running water sites in 2021. The Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol (BMS in short) is a long-term...

Soil life supports the functioning and biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Springtails (Collembola) are among the most abundant soil arthropods regulating soil fertility and flow of energy through above- and belowground food webs. However, the global distribution of springtail diversity and density, and how these relate to energy fluxes remains...

Here we report four spider findings that are new for the Province of South Tyrol (northern Italy), with two of them being new for Italy. All spider species were found on extensively grazed dry pastures located in the inner-alpine dry Vinschgau valley and in or close to the Italian LT(S)ER area „Val Mazia/Muntatschinig“ (LTER_EU_IT_097). The jumping...

There are few studies on ground-dwelling invertebrates from alpine ecosystems, often with only one or a few samplings per growing season. However, to get a most comprehensive picture of the faunal community present, samplings throughout an entire season are needed. Here we present data on ground-dwelling macro-invertebrate communities from four cha...

Land-use changes, especially agricultural intensification has increased in the last decades leading to a decrease in biodiversity. In Europe, grasslands have been influenced by humans for centuries and millennia and management intensity has increased since the 20th century. In this small-case study, we investigate how management intensity affects g...

The severe biodiversity decline in European agricultural landscapes demands a specific evaluation of the various land-use practices. Many butterflies in Europe, as an important ecological indicator and pollinator taxon, require human interventions to sustain their populations in cultivated landscapes. However, land-use changes and management intens...

Global change is affecting soil biodiversity and functioning across all terrestrial ecosystems. Still, much is unknown about how soil biodiversity and function will change in the future in response to simultaneous alterations in climate and land use, as well as other environmental drivers. It is crucial to understand the direct, indirect and intera...

Macro-invertebrates are important components of soil ecosystems as they provide a wide range of crucial functions and ecosystem services. Knowledge on their distribution in mountain soils is scarce despite the importance of such soils for people living in mountain regions as well as downstream. The present dataset contains records on soil macro-inv...

Understanding the effects of landscape composition and configuration, climate, and topography on bird diversity is necessary to identify distribution drivers, potential impacts of land use changes, and future conservation strategies. We surveyed bird communities in a study area located in the Central Alps (Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, northe...

Whether and how alpine organismic communities respond to ongoing environmental changes is difficult to assess quantitatively, given their intrinsically slow responses, remote locations and limited data. Here we provide a synthesis of the first five years of a multidisciplinary, highly standardized, long-term monitoring programme of terrestrial and...

Here we introduce the Soil BON Foodweb Team, a cross-continental collaborative network that aims to monitor soil animal communities and food webs using consistent methodology at a global scale. Soil animals support vital soil processes via soil structure modification, consumption of dead organic matter, and interactions with microbial and plant com...

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Metataxonomy has become the standard for characterizing the diversity and composition of microbial communities associated with multicellular organisms and their environment. Understanding the interactions between the microbiotas within the same ecosystem is essential for fully understanding the role of microorganisms in evolutionary and ecological...

Understanding and disentangle the effects of landscape composition and configuration, climate, and topography on bird diversity is necessary to identify distribution factors, potential impacts of land-use changes, and future conservation strategies. We studied bird taxonomic and functional diversity within the Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol at...

The soil beneath our feet still requires more exploration, although we know that it is home to a vast number of organisms. It is basically a black box we cannot see into to observe its inhabitants and the processes they contribute to. In this article, we will tell you about soils that are even less explored. We are talking about mountain soils at h...

European mountain grasslands are increasingly affected by land-use changes and climate, which have been suggested to exert important controls on grassland carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools. However, so far there has been no synthetic study on whether and how land-use changes and climate interactively affect the partitioning of these pools amongst t...

Here we introduce the Soil BON Foodweb Team, a cross-continental collaborative network that aims to monitor soil animal communities and food webs using consistent methodology at a global scale. Soil animals support vital soil processes via soil structure modification, direct consumption of dead organic matter, and interactions with microbial and pl...

Soil life supports the functioning and biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Springtails (Collembola) are among the most abundant soil animals regulating soil fertility and flow of energy through above- and belowground food webs. However, the global distribution of springtail diversity and density, and how these relate to energy fluxes remains un...

We report the findings of Xantholinus audrasi (Coiffat, 1956) (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) for South-Tyrol in Italy. The species, which was never been described for this region, was found in two different locations with an overall number of five specimens.

We studied abundance, diversity, and composition of soil invertebrates along snowmelt gradients to generally understand how soil animal communities are responding to life conditions across snowbeds along a west–east transect of the European Alps and to create a reference inventory for future investigations of climate change effects on snowbed habit...

Litter decomposition is a key process for carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and is mainly controlled by environmental conditions, substrate quantity, and quality as well as microbial community abundance and composition. In particular, the effects of climate and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on litter decomposition and its...

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provid...

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provid...

For the northernmost province of Italy, South Tyrol, a permanent biodiversity monitoring system has been set up on the initiative of the South Tyrolean provincial government and under the direction of the Institute for Alpine Environment, Eurac Research. This monitoring not only serves as basic research but also intends to provide a scientific basi...

Intensification of agriculture has led to a decrease of biodiversity in grasslands, leading also to lower epigeic invertebrate numbers in those habitats. Because vegetation structure changes due to the increasing number of cuttings and the high input of fertilizers, ground-dwelling invertebrates decrease. Our study sites were located in Barbian/Bar...

The systematics of the dipteran family Sciaridae is based mainly on morphological characters and has remained quite controversial. In this study, we used two mitochondrial DNA markers (CO1, 16S) and a nuclear one (28S) to take a glimpse into phylogenetic relationships of part of the North and Central European Sciaridae. A total of 91 species from 1...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

Little is known about the complex processes within the soil ecosystem and especially about soil animals and their role in supporting and sustaining ecosystem functioning in alpine soils. Currently, environmental and socioeconomic changes, such as climate change and the cessation of traditional cultivation, are influencing mountain ecosystems. Epi-...

This study want to assess the effect of environmental factors such as temperature, global radiation, precipitation, snow coverage and many more on the Ground Beetles communities along an elevational gradient. In this sense, the analysis of the functional traits of Carabids can be useful in order to understand how the environmental factors influence...

In the last 100 years, climate warming has been affecting the European Alps faster and more severely than globally observed temperature patterns. Temperature changes are known to affect soil properties and microbial community structures, and land-use change in Europe is an expected socio-economic consequence of climate change. However, few studies...

To understand how diversity is distributed in space is a fundamental aim for optimizing future species and community conservation. We examined in parallel species richness and beta diversity components of nine taxonomic groups along a finite space, represented by pastured grasslands along an elevational gradient. Beta diversity, which is assumed to...

Land-use changes and especially management intensification currently pose a major threat to biodiversity both on and beneath the soil surface. With a comparative approach, we investigated how management intensity in orchards and meadows influences soil macro-invertebrate communities in a North-Italian Alpine region. We compared soil fauna assemblie...

Alpine semi-natural grasslands were formed by hundreds of years of traditional and extensive land-use resulting in a distinct flora and fauna. Socio-economic changes in the last century led to the abandonment of a large number of alpine pasturelands. Even though litter composition and quality will permanently alter due to shifts in plant species co...

In the Central Alps the treeline is formed by the European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) and the Swiss pine (Pinus cembra L.), shaping the alpine plant community Larici-Cembretum. Currently, alpine pastures, which are increasingly abandoned in the European Alps, are colonised, after a phase of shrub encroachment, by the European larch, while a Swiss...

The Dermestidae species Attagenus smirnovi Zhantiev, 1973 was discovered in two household in South Tyrol, making it the first official records for this species in Italy. The larvae feeds upon dried organic materials, making this species a common pest in museum collections and households in Central and Northern Europe. The spread of A. smirnovi in I...

Soil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, their distribution, and the threats affecting them. We compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries as a basis for predicting patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, a...

This PDF file includes: Materials and Methods Supplementary Text Figs. S1 to S6 Tables S1 to S4 References

In the original publication of the article, Figure 2 was published without the labels. The corrected figure and figure legend are provided in this Correction.

The genus Opetiopalpus from the family of checkered beetles (Coleoptera: Cleridae) is represented by 28 species worldwide, with 11 species found in the Palearctic and only four sparsely in Europe prior to 1998. One species, Opetiopalpus sabulosus Motschulsky, 1840, was recently found in Eastern Europe (i.e. Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldavia), with th...

Aims: Litter decomposition patterns, non-additive effects, and spectral data of abundant alpine leaf litters were assessed in litterbag experiments containing single species and mixtures. We tested if low-quality shrub litter decomposes faster in mixtures with high-quality litter and if predictions on decomposed litter using spectral data are feasi...