Cocoa-based agroforestry systems have the capacity to increase carbon storage in areas degraded by pasture in the Amazon. Therefore, we evaluated the soil carbon storage capacity down to 150 cm depth in cocoa-based agroforestry systems in a deforested Amazonian landscape of Colombia. Each shade tree species (Abarco Cariniana pyriformis , Capirón Calycophyllum spruceanum , Caracolí Anacardium excelsum , and Huito Genipa america...

Aim Macroinvertebrates comprise a highly diverse set of taxa with great potential as indicators of soil quality. Communities were sampled at 3,694 sites distributed world‐wide. We aimed to analyse the patterns of abundance, composition and network characteristics and their relationships to latitude, mean annual temperature and rainfall, land cover, soil texture and agricultural practices. Location Sites are distributed in 41 c...

Amazonian rainforests, once thought to be pristine wilderness, are increasingly known to have been widely inhabited, modified, and managed prior to European arrival, by human populations with diverse cultural backgrounds. Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are fertile soils found throughout the Amazon Basin, created by pre‐Columbian societies with sedentary habits. Much is known about the chemistry of these soils, yet their zoology...

Human activities are accelerating global biodiversity change and have resulted in severely threatened ecosystem services. A large proportion of terrestrial biodiversity is harbored by soil, but soil biodiversity has been omitted from many global biodiversity assessments and conservation actions, and understanding of global patterns of soil biodiversity remains limited. In particular, the extent to which hotspots and coldspots...

Assessing how much management of agricultural landscapes, in addition to protected areas, can offset biodiversity erosion in the tropics is a central issue for conservation that still requires cross‐taxonomic and landscape‐scale studies. We measured the effects of Amazonia deforestation and subsequent land‐use intensification in 6 agricultural areas (landscape scale), where we sampled plants and 4 animal groups (birds, earthwo...

Soil fauna activities are probably more important than currently acknowledged in determining individual plant response to stresses and overall plant diversity. Here we demonstrate that the positive effect of earthworms on rice could be the result of a systemic effect on plant physiology. Moreover, this effect could improve tolerance to stressors such as parasitic nematodes. In a controlled experiment, an 82% decrease in the pr...