by Matteo Cavallito<\/p>\n
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Poor land use produces obvious damage to the entire fauna living there. But subterranean living species<\/strong> – such as invertebrates and bacteria, for example – seem to pay a higher price than their surface peers. The restoration of underground fauna takes more time to return to baseline conditions, That’s the hypothesis suggested by a research<\/a> published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution.<\/p>\n The investigation, by a team of scientists led by Victoria J. Burton<\/strong>, a researcher at Imperial College London, at the same time highlights how the analytical models most commonly used to explain the impact of land-use change on naturally occurring organisms are not always well suited to describe the effects of this phenomenon in the subsurface.<\/p>\n “Land-use is a major driver of changes in biodiversity worldwide, but studies have overwhelmingly focused on above-ground taxa,” the research states. “The effects on soil biodiversity are less well known, despite the importance of soil organisms in ecosystem functioning.”<\/p>\n