Matty P. Berg

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Ecological Science / Animal Ecology

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...

The black, globular springtail Sminthurinus lawrencei Gisin, 1963 has long been thought of as a rare species, known from only few localities in only three countries, up to and including 2020. This work describes the discovery of this species in other countries resulting from identification of newly collected specimens, a re-analysis of older collec...

Traits are key for understanding the environmental responses and ecological roles of organisms. Trait approaches to functional ecology are well established for plants, whereas consistent frameworks for animal groups are less developed. Here we suggest a framework for the study of the functional ecology of animals from a trait‐based response–effect...

1. Previous studies showed that bark cover at early-decay stage had profound control on the invertebrate assemblages of bark and wood, with possible consequence for the decomposition process. However, previous experimental designs could not disentangle how bark versus wood traits affect the invertebrate assemblage process in bark and/or wood separa...

The metamicrobiome is an integrated concept to study carbon and nutrient recycling in ecosystems. Decomposition of plant-derived matter by free-living microbes and fire – two key recycling pathways – are highly sensitive to global change. Mutualistic associations of microbes with plants and animals strongly reduce this sensitivity. By solving a fun...

Deadwood is a large global carbon store with its store size partially determined by biotic decay. Microbial wood decay rates are known to respond to changing temperature and precipitation. Termites are also important decomposers in the tropics but are less well studied. An understanding of their climate sensitivities is needed to estimate climate c...

Body size plays an important role in predator-prey interactions, but its evolution is often limited due to all sorts of constraints. The arms race between bats and moths provides great opportunities to study body size evolution and associated traits across a wide range of species. Nocturnally-active moths are in particular limited in evolving large...

Coevolution has driven speciation and evolutionary novelty in functional traits across the Tree of Life. Classic coevolutionary syndromes such as plant–pollinator, plant–herbivore, and host–parasite have focused strongly on the fitness consequences during the lifetime of the interacting partners. Less is known about the consequences of coevolved tr...

Berg M.P., 2012. Natuuratlas Zaanstad, Hoofdstuk 19: Kleine bodemdieren. CD-ROM Bijlage: Checklist Kleine bodemdieren. In: Van ‘t Veer, R., T. Kisjes & N. Sminia (red). Natuuratlas Zaanstad. Stichting Uitgeverij Noord-Holland, Wormer.

Green roofs are often promoted as a mean to counter the negative environmental effects of urbanization on nature and to increase the amount of green space in cities. Green roofs often enhance aboveground biodiversity, especially herbivores and pollinators. However, if and in what way they support belowground biodiversity, and more specifically soil...

The interplay between organisms with their abiotic environment may have profound effects within ecological networks, but are still poorly understood. Soil physical ecosystem engineers (EEs) modify the abiotic environment, thereby potentially affecting the distribution of other species, such as microarthropods. We focus on three co-occurring physica...

Soil invertebrates are members of terrestrial ecosystems, contributing to the processing of organic matter, resulting in carbon and nutrient cycling that is essential for continuous productivity. By linking species delineations, morphological traits and measured or inferred functional roles, we demonstrate a method for functional identification of...

Animals, such as termites, have largely been overlooked as global-scale drivers of biogeochemical cycles 1,2 , despite site-specific findings 3,4 . Deadwood turnover, an important component of the carbon cycle, is driven by multiple decay agents. Studies have focused on temperate systems 5,6 , where microbes dominate decay ⁷ . Microbial decay is se...

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...

De ecologische kwaliteit van het Markermeer is sinds de aanleg van de Houtribdijk sterk achteruitgegaan. Die Houtribdijk weer weghalen is geen optie, al was het maar omwille van de ‘ecosysteemdiensten’, zoals de waterhuishouding. In 2016 is een alternatieve aanpak gekozen: uit de zachte sedimenten van het kunstmatige Markermeer is een archipel van...

1. Ecosystems are increasingly managed to provide multiple benefits to humans, which often degrades their ecological integrity. This strongly applies to aquatic ecosystems, in which engineering can enhance flood protection, drinking water supply, fisheries and recreation. Although these activities typically increase ecosystem functionality to human...

The digestive tract of animals harbors microbiota important for the host’s fitness and performance. The interaction between digestive tract bacteria and soil animal hosts is still poorly explored despite the importance of soil fauna for ecosystem processes. In this study, we investigated the interactions between the bacterial communities from the d...

The plant economics spectrum integrates trade‐offs and covariation in resource economic traits of different plant organs and their consequences for pivotal ecosystem processes, such as decomposition. However, in this concept stems are often considered as one unit ignoring the important functional differences between wood (xylem) and bark. These dif...

Natural forests contain a large amount of deadwood, which is a key contributor to biodiversity, especially by providing dynamic habitats and resources for a huge variety of invertebrates. However, for managing forest biodiversity we need to better understand what drives the dynamics of invertebrate communities in deadwood. We hypothesized that the...

Understanding how plants respond to environmental gradients and influence ecosystem functions remains a core challenge in ecology. Across species and ecosystems, plants have been shown to coordinate leaf, stem, and root traits along a gradient with optimal resource acquisition or conservation strategies at its extremes, termed the plant economic sp...

Terrestrial isopods have evolved adaptations to reduce water loss, which is necessary for life in low humidity environments. However, the evolution of a waterproofed cuticle to prevent loss of water to the environment could also impede oxygen uptake from the environment. We therefore postulate an evolutionary trade-off between water retention and g...

Human activities often impact the sensory environment of organisms. Wind energy turbines are a fast-growing potential source of anthropogenic vibrational noise that can affect soil animals sensitive to vibrations and thereby alter soil community functioning. Larger soil animals, such as earthworms (macrofauna, > 1 cm in size), are particularly like...

Handbook of Trait-Based Ecology - From Theory to R Tools Functional ecology is the branch of ecology that focuses on various functions that species play in the community or ecosystem in which they occur. This accessible guide offers the main concepts and tools in trait-based ecology, and their tricks, covering different trophic levels and organism...

Collembola are among the most abundant and diverse soil microarthropods, which are found in almost all (semi)terrestrial environments and often serve as model organisms in empirical studies. Diverse data collected on the biology and ecology of Collembola over the last century are waiting for synthesis studies, while developing technologies may faci...

1. At broad spatial scales, the factors regulating litter decomposition remain ambiguous, with the understanding of these factors largely based on studies investigating site‐specific single litter species, whereas studies using multi litter species mixtures across sites are rare. 2. We exposed in microcosms containing single species and all possibl...

Elytrigia atherica is a native invasive plant species whose expansion on salt marshes is attributed to genotypic and phenotypic adaptations to non-ideal environmental conditions, forming two ecotypes. It is unknown how E. atherica–microbiome interactions are contributing to its adaptation. Here we investigated the effect of sea-water flooding frequ...

The relatively poor simulation of the below-ground processes is a severe drawback for many ecosystem models, especially when predicting responses to climate change and management. For a meaningful estimation of ecosystem production and the cycling of water, energy, nutrients and carbon, the integration of soil processes and the exchanges at the sur...

Publisher: Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqdk Citation Zhou, Shixing et al. (2020), Data from: Decomposition of leaf litter mixtures across biomes: The role of litter identity, diversity and soil fauna, v4, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqdk Abstract Zhou, Shixing et al. (2020), Data from: Decomposition of ...

Understanding what drives soil fauna species composition through space and time is crucial because we should preserve soil fauna biodiversity and its key role in ecosystem functioning in this era of fast environmental change. As plant leaf litter provides both food and habitat for soil fauna, a focus on litter traits that relate to these two functi...

This Handbook of methods aim to provide the different techniques and methodologies to obtain a minimum data set of variables, from soil biodiversity assessment to SOM dynamics, including, isotope analysis, bioturbation assessment and metagenomics. With the knowledge gathered in forthcoming projects and studies, researchers (biogeochemists and soil...

Knowledge of the effect of plant secondary compounds (PSCs) on belowground interactions in the more diffuse community of species living outside the rhizosphere is sparse compared with what we know about how PSCs affect aboveground interactions. We illustrate here that PSCs from foliar tissue, root exudates, and leaf litter effectively influence suc...

Urbanisation involves major changes in environmental conditions such as light, temperature, humidity and noise levels, but the effect of urbanisation on soil conditions and soil biodiversity has received less attention. The reported effects on species richness across a rural to urban landscapes are not unequivocal. Positive, negative and neutral ef...

Carbon cycling models consider soil carbon sequestration a key process for climate change mitigation. However, these models mostly focus on abiotic soil processes and, despite its recognized critical mechanistic role, do not explicitly include interacting soil organisms. Here, we use a literature study to show that even a relatively simple soil com...

Urban development and species invasion are two major global threats to biodiversity. These threats often co‐occur, as developed areas are more prone to species invasion. However, few empirical studies have tested if both factors affect biodiversity in similar ways. Here we study the individual and combined effects of urban development and plant inv...

Soil ecosystems around the world are currently either directly or indirectly affected by human influences. This often poses a challenge on the performance and survival of species inhabiting these ecosystems, and alter the interactions between species. Examples of such disturbances are the application of different kinds of pesticides to optimize foo...

Common-garden experiments with populations sampled along natural thermal gradients help to reveal local adaptation, disentangle environmental and genetic effects, and ultimately predict, by analogy, future biotic responses to climate change. In this regard, geothermal habitats are useful model systems as they exhibit dramatic changes in soil temper...

Despite great advances, experiments concerning the response of ecosystems to climate change still face considerable challenges, including the high complexity of climate change in terms of environmental variables, constraints in the number and amplitude of climate treatment levels, and the limited scope of responses and interactions covered. Drawing...

Soil faunal activity can be a major control of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soil. Effects of single faunal species, genera or families have been investigated, but it is unknown how soil fauna diversity may influence emissions of both carbon dioxide (CO2, end product of decomposition of organic matter) and nitrous oxide (N2O, an intermediate...

In biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research, the consideration of intraspecific trait variation and multiple trophic levels – both largely overlooked so far – has been proposed as a promising step towards a consensus about causal relationships and mechanisms. Soil invertebrates contribute crucially to leaf litter decomposition and thus to th...

*English below* De vormenrijkdom binnen de miljoenpoten is groot, van het penseeltje met een kort gedrongen lichaam en veel lange, afstaande haren, tot langgerekte, slangvormige soorten en soorten die zich kunnen oprollen tot een balletje. De platrugmiljoenpoten zijn makkelijk te herkennen aan de afgeplatte lichaamssegmenten. Vanaf de voorkant beke...

Temporal variation in demographic processes can greatly impact population dynamics. Perturbations of statistical coefficients that describe demographic rates within matrix models have, for example, revealed that stochastic population growth rates (log(λs)) of fast life histories are more sensitive to temporal autocorrelation of environmental condit...

Dead wood availability and the variability in dead wood quality, i.e. tree species and decay stages, are often low in managed forests, which negatively affects biodiversity of invertebrate species. Leaving more (coarse) dead wood can increase invertebrate richness, but it remains unclear how many and which combinations of tree taxa and decay stages...

Sandy beach food webs depend heavily upon marine organic input, such as macroalgae, as internal organic matter productivity is low. The fate, however, of this marine organic material (termed wrack) after being deposited onto the beach and its relation to pioneer vegetation, consisting of annual and perennial beach plants, needs to be further elucid...

Pimpernelblauwtjes, knoopmieren en springstaarten zijn onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden. De rupsen van de blauwtjes leven in de nesten van knoopmieren en springstaarten vormen een belangrijke voedselbron van knoopmieren. Om meer inzicht te krijgen in deze relaties is de verspreiding van springstaarten in een recentelijk afgegraven natuurontwikkel...

Climate change is one of many ongoing human-induced environmental changes, but few studies consider interactive effects between multiple anthropogenic disturbances. In coastal sub-arctic heathland, we quantified the impact of a factorial design simulating extreme winter warming (WW) events (7 days at 6–7°C) combined with episodic summer nitrogen (+...

Extreme climatic events can have profound effects on ecosystems. Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, which raises the probability that natural ecosystems will be exposed to subsequent or simultaneous extreme events. Exposure to multiple extreme events may involve very different abiotic stressors,...

1. It has been widely recognized that species show extensive variation in form and function. Based on species' attributes, they can be positioned along major axes of variation, which are often defined by life-history traits, such as number of offspring , age at maturity or generation time. Less emphasis has been given in this respect to tolerance t...

The plant economics spectrum (PES) integrates trade-offs and coordination in resource traits among species within and between organs, and affects ecosystem processes such as litter decomposition. This PES is currently based on trait variation among a wide range of plant types and growth forms. Here we ask whether the PES also features within the sa...

PurposeMost of the agricultural landscape in Europe, and elsewhere, consists of mosaics with scattered fragments of semi-natural habitat like small forest fragments. Mutual interactions between forest fragments and agricultural areas influence ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, a process strongly mediated by the macrodetritivore communit...

In het weekend van 3 tot en met 5 juni 2016 is de 171e zomerbijeenkomst van de NEV gehouden. Dit jaar hebben de 47 deelnemers 48 kilometerhokken in de Noord-Hollandse duinen geïnventariseerd op geleedpotigen. In totaal zijn er 1313 soorten insecten en andere geleedpotigen gevonden. Er zijn maar liefst elf nieuwe soorten voor Nederland gevonden, waa...

Ecosystems comprise flows of energy and materials, structured by organisms and their interactions. Important generalizations have emerged in recent decades about conversions by organisms of energy (metabolic theory of ecology) and materials (ecological stoichiometry). However, these new insights leave a key question about ecosystems inadequately ad...

Suboptimal environmental conditions are ubiquitous in nature and commonly drive the outcome of biological interactions in community processes. Despite the importance of biological interactions for community processes, knowledge on how species interactions are affected by a limiting resource, for example, low food availability, remains limited. Here...

Human activities have caused global changes of atmospheric chemistry resulting in increased temperature especially in the colder regions of the northern hemisphere. Since warming of the environment can have drastic effects on terrestrial ecosystems it is important to experimentally evaluate the extent of such effects in long-term field-based experi...

Temperature extremes are predicted to increase in frequency, intensity and duration under global warming and are believed to significantly affect community composition and functioning. However, the effect of extreme climatic events on communities remains difficult to predict, especially because species can show dissimilar responses to abiotic chang...

Forest edges show strong abiotic and biotic gradients potentially altering community composition and ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling. While abiotic gradients are well studied, short-scale biotic gradients, like detritivore species composition and their associated trait distribution remains a poorly explored research-field. We sampled w...

Soil organic matter (SOM) is key to soil fertility, climate change mitigation, combatting land degradation, and the conservation of above-and below-ground biodiversity and associated ecosystem services like decomposition, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, detoxification and maintenance of soil physico-chemical properties. SOM dynamics represe...