News
First nonprofit to map the Earth’s fungal networks receives record multi-million donation, signaling new frontier in global conservation
BOSTON, Massachusetts and AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (November 30, 2021) - Today, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is announcing the largest-ever donation to map, conserve, and protect underground fungal networks, given by the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust. SPUN, which originated out of the ‘Demonstrator Lab’ at VU Amsterdam and ETH Zurich, will use this funding to lead the first global exploration and mapping of underground fungal networks that play a critical role below the surface, sequestering carbon and moving nutrients across ecosystems.
Jeremy Grantham, a climate advocate who has pledged 98 percent of his net worth to fighting climate change, says: “Just below our feet lies an invaluable ally in mitigating climate change – vast hidden fungal networks. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide flow annually from plants into fungal networks. And yet, these carbon sinks are poorly understood. In working to map and harness this threatened but vital resource for life on earth, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks is pioneering a new chapter in global conservation."
Co-founded by Toby Kiers and Colin Averill, SPUN’s mission as a science-based initiative is to advocate for the protection of underground networks threatened by human activity and climate extremes, and utilize fungal networks to help sequester carbon, move nutrients, and protect ecosystem biodiversity. SPUN is supported by leading researchers, including Professor Diana Wall, Science Chair of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, housed at the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University.
Currently fungal networks face an uncertain future. Their loss - driven by agricultural expansion, pollution, urbanization and deforestation - is largely undocumented and invisible.
Network exploration is being guided by a team of prominent advisors including conservationist Jane Goodall, authors Michael Pollan, and Merlin Sheldrake, and founder of the Fungi Foundation, Giuliana Furci. Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, said: "This is an extremely important conservation project. An understanding of underground fungal networks is essential to our efforts to protect the soil, on which life depends, before it is too late.”
SPUN is also announcing two members of its Governing Board on 30 November 2021: Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia and Mark Tercek, former CEO of the Nature Conservancy.
When explaining his reasons for joining the SPUN Governing Board, Mark Tercek, explains: “Understanding underground ecosystems better is a big opportunity for biodiversity and climate initiatives. Fungal networks underpin life on Earth. If trees are the ‘lungs’ of the planet, fungal networks are the ‘circulatory systems.’ These networks are largely unexplored, yet remain one of the biggest untapped levers in science."
Rose Marcario, SPUN Governing Board member, adds: “The destruction of fungal networks accelerates climate change, biodiversity loss, and interrupts global nutrient cycles. I’m proud to be part of SPUN’s governing board to protect these networks before we lose the opportunity to partner with fungi to revolutionize agriculture, forestry, and carbon capture.”
Using 10,000 observations from the GlobalFungi dataset, coupled with hundreds of layers of global environmental data, SPUN is using machine learning to predict the distribution of network biodiversity across the planet. SPUN will collect an additional 10,000 samples across ecosystems on all continents in the next 18 months to explore network biodiversity and carbon-sequestration hotspots. Together with striking new visualizations of nutrients flows inside networks, these maps will be used to identify high-priority sites with the potential to store more carbon and survive extreme climate events.
SPUN will conduct its first sampling mission together with Fungi Foundation in April 2022, focused on network biodiversity hotspots, predicted to be in regions such as the highlands of Patagonia. SPUN will train and partner with researchers, activists, and local communities to collect samples, and protect and manage underground ecosystems.
Nematodes in Space: The Final Frontier for Little Worms
The USDA Agricultural Research Service and NASA are teaming up to bring nematodes to space. They’re interested in sending beneficial nematodes to space to see if they can help reduce pests in crops grown in space. Learn more on the ARS website.
New observatory to probe the mysteries of Earth’s ‘forgotten’ subsoil
Check out this Science news article about a new NSF-funded research facility to explore the ‘forgotten’ deep soils of the earth!
SoilBON - The need for global soil biodiversity data coverage
Dr. Carlos Guerra, Co-Lead of SoilBON, discussed the need for global coverage of sample sites for upcoming soil biodiversity observation experiment in GeoMountains. GeoMountains is an initiative of GEOBon and the Mountain Research Initiative.
New statement by the EFSA Panel of the Plant Protection Products and their Residues
Check out the new statement by the EFSA Panel of the Plant Protection Products and their Residues (PPR).
Publication: Hernandez‐Jerez, A., P. Adriaanse, A. Aldrich, P. Berny, T. Coja, S. Duquesne, A. Focks, M. Marina, M. Millet, O. Pelkonen, A. Tiktak, C. Topping, A. Widenfalk, M. Wilks, G. Wolterink, A. Conrad, and S. Pieper. 2021. Statement of the PPR Panel on a framework for conducting the environmental exposure and risk assessment for transition metals when used as active substances in plant protection products (PPP). EFSA Journal 19:e06498. doi: https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2021.6498
Researchers call for international protection strategies for soil ecosystem
Check out this new article in the Colorado State University Source about a recent Science paper calling for an ecosystem approach to conserving soil biodiversity.
Source article: Tilch, S. (2021) Researchers call for international protection strategies for soil ecosystem.
Publication: Carlos A. Guerra, Richard D. Bardgett, Lucrezia Caon, Thomas W. Crowther, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Luca Montanarella, Laetitia M. Navarro, Alberto Orgiazzi, Brajesh K. Singh, Leho Tedersoo, Ronald Vargas-Rojas, Maria J. I. Briones, François Buscot, Erin K. Cameron, Simone Cesarz, Antonis Chatzinotas, Don A. Cowan, Ika Djukic, Johan van den Hoogen, Anika Lehmann, Fernando T. Maestre, César Marín, Thomas Reitz, Matthias C. Rillig, Linnea C. Smith, Franciska T. de Vries, Alexandra Weigelt, Diana H. Wall & Nico Eisenhauer (2020): Tracking, targeting, and conserving soil biodiversity - A monitoring and indicator system can inform policy, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.abd7926
Measuring the Belowground World
Researchers call for greater consideration of soil biodiversity and functions in international conservation strategies:
Leipzig/Halle/Fort Collins. A quarter of all known species live in the soil. Life above ground depends on the soil and its countless inhabitants. Yet, global strategies to protect biodiversity have so far paid little attention to this habitat. In the journal Science, an international team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Leipzig University (UL) and Colorado State University calls for greater consideration of soils in the renegotiation of international biodiversity strategies. Their relevance must be recognised far beyond agriculture. In order to make the status and performance of soils more visible, the researchers explain their plan for systematic recording based on common global standards.
If you asked people which group of animals is the most abundant on earth, hardly anyone would know the right answer. Ants? Fish? No, and not humans either. The answer is nematodes, also known as roundworms. Four out of five animals on earth belong to this group, and the reason hardly anyone is aware of the fact is that they live underground, invisible to us. Together with thousands of other soil organisms, they quietly, discreetly and constantly perform enormously important services for the world above them.
The soil is one of the most species-rich habitats in existence. Living under one square meter of healthy soil you can find up to 1.5 kilograms of organisms: among others, roundworms, earthworms, springtails, mites and insect larvae. There is also a multitude of microorganisms including bacteria, protists and fungi. They eat and transform living and dead animal and plant material into nutrients which become the basis for growth and new life. Without soil organisms, no plants would be able to grow and no humans could live.
It is therefore all the more astonishing that soils have so far hardly featured in international strategies for protecting biodiversity. The authors of the new article in Science see this as a big problem: “If we do not protect soils for the next generations, aboveground biodiversity and food production cannot be guaranteed either.” Their appeal goes out to the 196 nations who are currently negotiating a new strategy to protect biodiversity within the framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Healthy soils are becoming increasingly rare. They suffer the burden of intensive cultivation with heavy machinery, fertilisers and pesticides, are compacted, built over or are lost due to wind and water erosion. Global warming is putting them under additional pressure. According to the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, around 24 billion tons of fertile soil are lost worldwide every year. As a result, the soils’ wide variety of services such as water purification and protection against plant diseases gradually decline. In addition, soils are the most important carbon reservoir on earth and therefore help slow global climate warming.
According to the researchers, these services are given far too little attention in the political debate. “Up to now, soil conservation has been mostly reduced to the impacts related to soil erosion and its importance for agriculture,” said first author Dr Carlos Guerra (iDiv, MLU). “It's about time that soil conservation policies consider the protection of soil organisms and ecosystem functions more than just for food production and other productive systems. Soil biodiversity monitoring and conservation can support the achievement and tracking of many sustainability goals, targeting areas such as climate, food and biodiversity protection.”
“Protection measures have so far mainly focused on life above ground, for example in the designation of protected areas,” said senior author Dr Diana Wall from Colorado State University. However, since these do not necessarily benefit underground biodiversity, the specific needs of the biotic communities in the soil have to be taken into account.
In order to be able to decide which regions of the world are particularly in need of protection, and which protective measures are appropriate, sufficient information must be available on the status and trends of biodiversity in soils. Since this has not been the case so far, the researchers launched the Soil BON monitoring network. “We want to move biodiversity in soils into the focus of conservation efforts. To do this, we must provide policymakers with the necessary information to support decision-making,” said senior author Prof Nico Eisenhauer, research group leader at iDiv and Leipzig University. “Soil BON will produce and support the production of the relevant data to achieve this goal.”
Soil BON is designed to help collect comparable soil data across the board and over long time periods. Standardised rules are necessary worldwide to determine what should be recorded and how. The researchers propose a holistic approach for this based on the so-called Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). EBVs are key priority variables for measuring biodiversity and its change. In the case of Soil BON, these include parameters such as soil respiration, soil enzyme activity, nutrient turnover and genetic diversity. Indicators are derived from the EBVs, which serve as a basis for decisions on the assessment and protection priorities of soils.
According to the researchers, their proposed monitoring and indicator system will enable the worldwide condition of soils and their capacity to function to be recorded efficiently and monitored long term. They emphasise that it also serves as an important early warning system; with its help, it will be possible to identify, at an early stage, whether existing nature conservation goals can be achieved with current measures.
This research was, among others, supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; FZT-118).
Original publication
Carlos A. Guerra, Richard D. Bardgett, Lucrezia Caon, Thomas W. Crowther, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Luca Montanarella, Laetitia M. Navarro, Alberto Orgiazzi, Brajesh K. Singh, Leho Tedersoo, Ronald Vargas-Rojas, Maria J. I. Briones, François Buscot, Erin K. Cameron, Simone Cesarz, Antonis Chatzinotas, Don A. Cowan, Ika Djukic, Johan van den Hoogen, Anika Lehmann, Fernando T. Maestre, César Marín, Thomas Reitz, Matthias C. Rillig, Linnea C. Smith, Franciska T. de Vries, Alexandra Weigelt, Diana H. Wall & Nico Eisenhauer (2020): Tracking, targeting, and conserving soil biodiversity - A monitoring and indicator system can inform policy, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.abd7926
Contact
Dr Carlos Guerra
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Phone: +49 341 9733174
Email: carlos.guerra@idiv.de
Web: www.idiv.de/en/groups_and_people/employees/details/474.html
Prof Nico Eisenhauer
Head of the research group Experimental Interaction Ecology
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Leipzig University
Phone: +49 341 97 33167
Email: nico.eisenhauer@idiv.de
Web: www.idiv.de/en/groups_and_people/employees/details/eshow/eisenhauer_nico.html
Prof Diana Wall
Colorado State University
Email: Diana.Wall@colostate.edu
Phone: +1 970215-3888
Web: https://walllab.colostate.edu/people/dr-diana-h-wall/
Sebastian Tilch
Media and Communications
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Phone: +49 341 97 33197
Email: sebastian.tilch@idiv.de
Web: www.idiv.de/en/media
Cafe, croissant, worms? EU agency says worms safe to eat
Check out this news article announcing that worms have been declared safe for human consumption.
New Research on the Impacts of Global Change Reviews the State of the Planet
Dr. Corey J. A. Bradshaw and his colleagues published a perspective article in Frontiers in Conservation Science yesterday describing the challenges that global change and climate change pose to the planet. They look at biodiversity loss, the current mass extinction, the growing human population, failure to meet sustainability goals, changes in climate, and current political climates across the globe.
Publication: Bradshaw, C. J. A., Ehrlich, P. R., Beattie, A., Ceballos, G., Crist, E., Diamond, J., Dirzo, R., Ehrlich, A. H., Harte, J., Harte, M. E., Pyke, G., Raven, P. H., Ripple, W. J., Saltré, F., Turnbull, C., Wackernagel, M., & Blumstein, D. T. (2021). Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 1. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419
Conversation Article: Bradshaw, C. J. A., Blumstein, D. T., & Ehrlich, P. R. (2021). Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp. The Conversation.
The Social Life of Forests
Check out this new article in the New York Times about the role that soil mycorhizae plays in tree communication.
Soil BON Collaboration
Humans depend on living soil resources for their nutrition, recreation, and health needs. Yet, the current and future response of global soil biodiversity to human activities and the consequences for ecosystems and their essential functions remains unknown. Implementing operational and sustained programs to detect changes to soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning as a result of human activities is critical to understanding and managing impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services. Constituted as a global Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (Soil BON), this group is working in partnership with the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI) and other international partners to make soil biodiversity and ecosystem function observations available to ensure living soil resources are sustainably conserved and managed. Soil BON partners represent a range of stakeholders, including researchers, educators, and policy advisors from academic, governmental, and private sectors. The goal is to further connect multi-national partners and initiatives in a worldwide effort to understand soil biodiversity, document how it is changing, how these changes affect people who rely on soil living resources for their well-being and livelihoods, and how sustainable use of ecosystems can safeguard soil biodiversity. Soil BON supports the development of a global community for the observation, understanding, and prediction of soil biodiversity, being a forum to network groups to advance methods for observing soil biodiversity including the integration of information across spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales. This includes addressing capacity-building needs from observations to informatics, helping to integrate existing and new field data following international standards.
GSBI joins European Commission’s Global Coalition for Biodiversity
The GSBI voices its support for biodiversity as it pledges support for the Global Coalition for Biodiversity. View the press release below.
FAO Global Soil Partnership webinar on Soil Biodiversity: a nature-based solution report
On May 22, 2020 the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership hosted a webinar on Soil Biodiversity: a nature-based solution. The webinar was attended by 1318 people from 146 countries across the globe. The FAO GSP report on the webinar is now available online.
Study says first terrestrial animal was a myriapod relative of the millipede
While a myriapod relative has long been hypothesized to be the first officially terrestrial animal, new support is emerging from Scottland where 425 myo Kampecaris obanensis is revealed to be the oldest terrestrial animal (so far..). Check out this issue of Historical Biology
New Geoderma volume focuses on ‘helicopter research’, or equity in soil science, an urgent topic in international research.
This month, the journal Geoderma focuses Volume 373 on the topic of “helicopter research”, and vital topic for the inclusion of diverse voices in soil science and soil biodiversity science. The following papers discuss the issue of helicopter research in collaborations:
Editorial:
van Groenigen and Stoof 2020 Helicopter research in soil science: A discussion. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114418
Research Articles:
Minasny et al., 2020a Global soil science research collaboration in the 21st century: time to end helicopter research. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114299.
Haile, 2020 Response to “Global soil science research collaboration in the 21st century: Time to end helicopter research”. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114300
Giller, 2020 Grounding the helicopters. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114302
Steenhuis et al., 2020 Intricacies of an effective global “rooted” collaboration in soil and water research. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114301
Minasny et al., 2020b Response to comments on “Global soil science research collaboration in the 21st Century: TIme to end helicopter research”. Geoderma (2020), 10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114303
New class on nematode morphology and anatomy
Dr. Dorota Porazinska from the University of Florida can provide more information about transfer credits or the class in general.
New database of mycorrhizal associations seeks contributions
A soon-to-be publication in New Phytologist by Dr. Nadia Soudzilovskaia of Leiden University and colleagues focuses on a new, comprehensive database of mycorrhizal-vascular plant associations called FungalRoot. The largest of its kind, this database is open to collaborators and data contributions. Check it out here!
Figure 1. Current global distribution of records of a) arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization, b) ectomycorrhizal colonization, c) ericois mycorrihal colonization, and d) non-mycorrhizal plant colonization in FUngalRoot (Soudzilovskaia et al. 2020.)
How mycorrhizae drives plant populations and communities
Dr. César Marín, the University of O’Higgins, Chile and lead of the South American Mycorrhizal Research Network, interviews Dr. Leho Tedersoo, the National History Museum of Estonia, on his 2020 Science paper about the general effects of different mycorrhizal types on plants. This is part of César’s monthly series, and is used with his permission (April 17, 2020). The GSBI is pleased to present this video blog.
How nematode worms could inspire safer opioid use
Click here to read the news article published by Angus Liu at Fierce BioTech:
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/how-nematode-worms-could-lead-to-safer-opioid-use
Click here to access the paper published in Science about the findings:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/08/14/science.aau2078
Earthworm research spurs farmers to act
A study of England’s farmland has found key earthworm types are rare or absent in two out of five fields and has led to the majority of farmers affected vowing to change the way they farm.
The results indicate widespread, historical over-cultivation, and may explain observed declines in other wildlife, such as the song thrush, that feed on these worms.
The #60minworms project was the first comprehensive worm survey concentrating solely on farmland and was carried out by farmers themselves – 57 percent of whom said they would now change their soil management practices as a result.
The scientist behind the survey, Dr Jackie Stroud, a NERC Soil Security Fellow at Rothamsted Research, said: “Earthworms are sensitive and responsive to soil management which makes them an ideal soil health indicator. The aim of this research was to find a baseline of farmland earthworm populations that would be useful and used by farmers to assess soil health now and in the future.”
Awesome example of citizen science making a difference. The results of Jackie Stroud's worm survey published today, suggesting huge savings could be made in farmland soil health monitoring.
— Rothamsted Research (@Rothamsted) February 21, 2019
Read more: https://t.co/M2l5b7eF8t@NFUtweets @Soil_Security @Operation_Earth @wormscience pic.twitter.com/TM5WmAMOOQ
Biologists categorise earthworms by ecological role - with surface dwelling and deep burrowing worms the types most sensitive to farming practices, whilst the topsoil worms are generally unaffected by over-cultivation.
Earthworms perform a number of useful ‘ecosystem services’, and high numbers of earthworms have been linked to enhanced plant productivity.
This new citizen science project published today in the journal PLOS One, has revealed most fields have good earthworm biodiversity – meaning an abundance of all three types of earthworms were seen.
In Spring 2018, the average field had 9 earthworms in every spadeful of soil, with top fields having three times that number. One in 10 fields had high earthworm numbers of more than 16 worms per spadeful.
However, the study also revealed that 42 percent of fields had poor earthworm biodiversity – meaning either very few or none of the surface dwelling and deep burrowing worms were seen.
The absence of deep burrowing worms on 16 percent of fields is concerning, says Dr Stroud, because they are 'drainage worms' with vertical burrows that aid water infiltration and ultimately helps combat waterlogging.
“The deep burrowing worms have slow reproduction rates so recovery in their populations could take a decade under changed management practices. In fact, we know very little about earthworm recovery rates.”
More than 1300 hectares were surveyed from all over England for the project, including fields managed under arable, potatoes, horticulture and pasture.
Each farmer volunteered to dig 10 regularly spaced pits across their field to make the observations, and an identification guide allowed them to allocate any sightings to one of the three main types of earthworm.
The success of this pilot project has already led to a much larger study, which recently concluded, says Dr Stroud.
“Working with farmers led to the redesign of the pilot survey, culminating in a shorter, more efficient field assessment and a co-created earthworm identification guide, to help improve farmer confidence in earthworm monitoring.
“These improvements were well received, with farmers all over the country spending an hour of their time digging five soil pits and assessing their earthworm populations in the Autumn.”
Empowering farmers to survey their own soils would save about £14 million in soil health monitoring if rolled out nationally, she added.
Healthy Soils were not a headline indicator for the draft DEFRA 25-year plan for the environment, so the DEFRA policy aspiration of achieving sustainable soils is currently unclear.
Despite this, soil health is widely regarded as vital for both farming and the environment.
Dr Stroud said: “Decisions made above the ground, whether by farmers or policy makers, influence the billions of earthworms that are engineering the soil ecosystem below the ground.
“Earthworms influence carbon cycling, water infiltration, pesticide movement, greenhouse gas emissions, plant productivity, the breeding success of birds and even the susceptibility of plants to insect attack.”
However, she added, as earthworms are sensitive to various farming practices, including tillage, rotations, cover cropping, organic matter additions, and pesticides, we need to do more to look after them.
“Crucially, working together with farmers, we now know typical earthworm numbers in agricultural soils and between us have developed a quick method for ongoing monitoring. Many farmers have reported they plan to survey again this Spring following benchmarking their fields last year.
“Soil health is complicated, but the path to doing things differently has to begin somewhere.”
The work is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with facilities provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).