Chemistry-driven Enchytraeidae assemblages acting as soil and ecosystem engineers in edaphic communities

Smaller body-sized invertebrate groups are known to be highly sensitive to environmental pollution. Like soil nematodes, enchytraeids have very permeable cuticles and come into direct contact with heavy metals; therefore they can be adversely affected by soil pollution. However, in contrast to nematodes, fewer data on enchytraeids are at our disposal to assess their functional responses to heavy metals. Such an assessment would be of greatest value, as in any edaphic community, enchytraeids are the only functional group bridging the detrital energy flux across the bacterial-driven and the fung... Mehr ...