Do Earthworms And Roots Cooperate To Build Soil Macroaggregates? A Microcosm Experiment

Abstract Soil ecosystem engineers are major actors of soil macroaggregation, a process that drives the production of ecosystem services by soils. However, our inability to identify the origins of different types of macroaggregates found in soils is an obstacle to describing and modeling their dynamics and associated processes (C sequestration; hydraulic properties). This laboratory study investigated mechanisms of biological soil macroaggregation by two different earthworm species (Apporectodea caliginosa (Savigny) and Allolobophora chlorotica (Savigny) and two plant species (Trifolium pratense, Plantago lanceolata L.), in isolation and in all possible combinations. Near infrared (NIR) spectral analysis significantly discriminated macroaggregates according to the organisms that created them since each organism produced macroaggregates with distinct NIR signals (p