{"type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [{"id": "10.1111/gcb.13446", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-27T16:19:25Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2016-09-03", "title": "The unseen invaders: introduced earthworms as drivers of change in plant communities in North American forests (a meta-analysis)", "description": "Abstract<p>Globally, biological invasions can have strong impacts on biodiversity as well as ecosystem functioning. While less conspicuous than introduced aboveground organisms, introduced belowground organisms may have similarly strong effects. Here, we synthesize for the first time the impacts of introduced earthworms on plant diversity and community composition in North American forests. We conducted a meta\uffe2\uff80\uff90analysis using a total of 645 observations to quantify mean effect sizes of associations between introduced earthworm communities and plant diversity, cover of plant functional groups, and cover of native and non\uffe2\uff80\uff90native plants. We found that plant diversity significantly declined with increasing richness of introduced earthworm ecological groups. While plant species richness or evenness did not change with earthworm invasion, our results indicate clear changes in plant community composition: cover of graminoids and non\uffe2\uff80\uff90native plant species significantly increased, and cover of native plant species (of all functional groups) tended to decrease, with increasing earthworm biomass. Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that introduced earthworms facilitate particular plant species adapted to the abiotic conditions of earthworm\uffe2\uff80\uff90invaded forests. Further, our study provides evidence that introduced earthworms are associated with declines in plant diversity in North American forests. Changing plant functional composition in these forests may have long\uffe2\uff80\uff90lasting effects on ecosystem functioning.</p>", "keywords": ["0106 biological sciences", "NONNATIVE EARTHWORMS", "ECOSYSTEM ENGINEER", "introduced earthworms", "biological invasions", "SEEDLING ESTABLISHMENT", "Forests", "01 natural sciences", "BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS", "GLOBAL METAANALYSIS", "HARDWOOD FORESTS", "Journal Article", "BIODIVERSITY CHANGE", "Animals", "ENDOGEIC EARTHWORMS", "earthworm invasion", "community composition", "Oligochaeta", "Ecosystem", "Biodiversity", "Plants", "15. Life on land", "Primary Research Articles", "plant diversity", "United States", "plant communities", "meta-analysis", "Environmental sciences", "Ecology", " evolutionary biology", "13. Climate action", "TEMPERATE FORESTS", "INVASIVE EARTHWORMS", "Introduced Species"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gcb.13446"}, {"href": "https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13446"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Global%20Change%20Biology", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1111/gcb.13446", "name": "item", "description": "10.1111/gcb.13446", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1111/gcb.13446"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2016-09-03T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1890/02-0433", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-27T16:20:42Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2007-06-04", "title": "Plant Diversity, Soil Microbial Communities, And Ecosystem Function: Are There Any Links?", "description": "A current debate in ecology centers on the extent to which ecosystem function depends on biodiversity. Here, we provide evidence from a long-term field manipulation of plant diversity that soil microbial communities, and the key ecosystem processes that they mediate, are significantly altered by plant species richness. After seven years of plant growth, we determined the composition and function of soil microbial communities beneath experimental plant diversity treatments containing 1-16 species. Microbial community bio- mass, respiration, and fungal abundance significantly increased with greater plant diversity, as did N mineralization rates. However, changes in microbial community biomass, activity, and composition largely resulted from the higher levels of plant production associated with greater diversity, rather than from plant diversity per se. Nonetheless, greater plant pro- duction could not explain more rapid N mineralization, indicating that plant diversity affected this microbial process, which controls rates of ecosystem N cycling. Greater N availability probably contributed to the positive relationship between plant diversity and productivity in the N-limited soils of our experiment, suggesting that plant-microbe in- teractions in soil are an integral component of plant diversity's influence on ecosystem", "keywords": ["2. Zero hunger", "soil C and N cycling", "Science", "Ecology and Evolutionary Biology", "microbial communities", "phospholipid fatty acid analysis", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "plant communities", "gross N mineralization", "soil microbes", "ecosystem function", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "species richness", "gross N immobilization", "biodiversity"], "contacts": [{"organization": "Zak, Donald R., Holmes, William E., White, David C., Peacock, Aaron D., Tilman, David,", "roles": ["creator"]}]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1890/02-0433"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Ecology", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1890/02-0433", "name": "item", "description": "10.1890/02-0433", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1890/02-0433"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2003-08-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.3390/f13091456", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-27T16:21:48Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2022-09-13", "title": "Knowledge about Plant Coexistence during Vegetation Succession for Forest Management on the Loess Plateau, China", "description": "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><article><p>Coexistence between species within plant communities is a key issue in the practice of revegetation, forest management, and biodiversity conservation. Vegetation restoration is critical to control soil erosion and improve the ecological environment on the Loess Plateau. Here, we investigate the interspecific relationships of dominant plants during natural vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau. The results suggest that, under the ecological process of environmental filtering, species within communities can reduce interspecific competition and promote species coexistence via spatial heterogeneity and temporal asynchronous differences. The ecological niche overlap index (Oik) significantly and positively correlated with the strength of interspecific associations. Most species pairs had weak competition and more stable interspecific relationships. The results of the \u03c72 test showed that 317 species pairs were positively associated and 118 were negatively associated. The community is in a positive succession process, and the interaction relationship between species tends to be neutral. We should enhance the protection of positively associated species and pay attention to negatively associated species during forest management. Results revealed that Carex lanceolata Boott and Lespedeza bicolor Turcz coexisted easily with other species for mutual benefit, which could help build artificial forestland of native species to improve the ecological function.</p></article>", "keywords": ["Overlap", "2. Zero hunger", "0106 biological sciences", "Plant communities", "ecological niche; overlap; plant communities; interspecific relationship; biodiversity conservation; spatial heterogeneity", "Ecological niche", "http://metadata.un.org/sdg/15", "Spatial heterogeneity", "Interspecific relationship", "15. Life on land", "Biodiversity conservation", "Protect", " restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems", " sustainably manage forests", " combat\u00a0desertification", " and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss", "01 natural sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/13/9/1456/pdf"}, {"href": "https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/13/9/1456/pdf"}, {"href": "https://doi.org/10.3390/f13091456"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Forests", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.3390/f13091456", "name": "item", "description": "10.3390/f13091456", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.3390/f13091456"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2022-09-10T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.3897/rio.5.e34564", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-27T16:22:11Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2019-04-01", "title": "Ecosystem responses to exotic earthworm invasion in northern North American forests", "description": "<p>Earth is experiencing a substantial loss of biodiversity at the global scale, while both species gains and losses are occurring at local and regional scales. The influence of these nonrandom changes in species distributions could profoundly affect the functioning of ecosystems and the essential services that they provide. However, few experimental tests have been conducted examining the influence of species invasions on ecosystem functioning. Even fewer have been conducted using invasive ecosystem engineers, which can have disproportionately strong influence on native ecosystems relative to their own biomass. The invasion of exotic earthworms is a prime example of an ecosystem engineer that is influencing many ecosystems around the world. In particular, European earthworm invasions of northern North American forests cause simultaneous species gains and losses with significant consequences for essential ecosystem processes like nutrient cycling and crucial services to humanity like soil erosion control and carbon sequestration. Exotic earthworms are expected to select for specific traits in communities of soil microorganisms (fast-growing bacteria species), soil fauna (promoting the bacterial energy channel), and plants (graminoids) through direct and indirect effects. This will accelerate some ecosystem processes and decelerate others, fundamentally altering how invaded forests function. This project aims to investigate ecosystem responses of northern North American forests to earthworm invasion. Using a novel, synthetic combination of field observations, field experiments, lab experiments, and meta-analyses, the proposed work will be the first systematic examination of earthworm effects on (1) plant communities and (2) soil food webs and processes. Further, (3) effects of a changing climate (warming and reduced summer precipitation) on earthworm performance will be investigated in a unique field experiment designed to predict the future spread and consequences of earthworm invasion in North America. By assessing the soil chemical and physical properties as well as the taxonomic (e.g., by the latest next-generation sequencing techniques) and functional composition of plant, soil microbial and animal communities and the processes they drive in four forests, work packages I-III take complementary approaches to derive a comprehensive and generalizable picture of how ecosystems change in response to earthworm invasion. Finally, in work package IV, meta-analyses will be used to integrate the information from work packages I-III and existing literature to investigate if earthworms cause invasion waves, invasion meltdowns, habitat homogenization, and ecosystem state shifts. Global data will be synthesized to test if the relative magnitude of effects differs from place to place depending on the functional dissimilarity between native soil fauna and exotic earthworms. Moving from local to global scale, the present proposal examines the influence of earthworm invasions on biodiversity\uffe2\uff80\uff93ecosystem functioning relationships from an aboveground\uffe2\uff80\uff93belowground perspective in natural settings. This approach is highly innovative as it utilizes the invasion by exotic earthworms as an exciting model system that links invasion biology with trait-based community ecology, global change research, and ecosystem ecology, pioneering a new generation of biodiversity\uffe2\uff80\uff93ecosystem functioning research.</p>", "keywords": ["0106 biological sciences", "2. Zero hunger", "Science", "biodiversity-ecosystem functioning", "Q", "Aboveground-belowground interactions", "earthworms", "soil food webs", "15. Life on land", "invasion", "biodivers", "01 natural sciences", "plant communities", "biodiversity change", "13. Climate action", "11. Sustainability", "Lumbricidae", "global change"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.5.e34564"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Research%20Ideas%20and%20Outcomes", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.3897/rio.5.e34564", "name": "item", "description": "10.3897/rio.5.e34564", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.3897/rio.5.e34564"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2019-04-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10261/308712", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-27T16:25:53Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2022-09-12", "title": "Knowledge about Plant Coexistence during Vegetation Succession for Forest Management on the Loess Plateau, China", "description": "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><article><p>Coexistence between species within plant communities is a key issue in the practice of revegetation, forest management, and biodiversity conservation. Vegetation restoration is critical to control soil erosion and improve the ecological environment on the Loess Plateau. Here, we investigate the interspecific relationships of dominant plants during natural vegetation succession on the Loess Plateau. The results suggest that, under the ecological process of environmental filtering, species within communities can reduce interspecific competition and promote species coexistence via spatial heterogeneity and temporal asynchronous differences. The ecological niche overlap index (Oik) significantly and positively correlated with the strength of interspecific associations. Most species pairs had weak competition and more stable interspecific relationships. The results of the \u03c72 test showed that 317 species pairs were positively associated and 118 were negatively associated. The community is in a positive succession process, and the interaction relationship between species tends to be neutral. We should enhance the protection of positively associated species and pay attention to negatively associated species during forest management. Results revealed that Carex lanceolata Boott and Lespedeza bicolor Turcz coexisted easily with other species for mutual benefit, which could help build artificial forestland of native species to improve the ecological function.</p></article>", "keywords": ["Overlap", "2. Zero hunger", "0106 biological sciences", "Protect", " restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems", " sustainably manage forests", " combat desertification", " and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss", "Plant communities", "Ecological niche", "ecological niche; overlap; plant communities; interspecific relationship; biodiversity conservation; spatial heterogeneity", "http://metadata.un.org/sdg/15", "Spatial heterogeneity", "Interspecific relationship", "15. Life on land", "Biodiversity conservation", "01 natural sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/13/9/1456/pdf"}, {"href": "https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/13/9/1456/pdf"}, {"href": "https://doi.org/10261/308712"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Forests", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10261/308712", "name": "item", "description": "10261/308712", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10261/308712"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2022-09-10T00:00:00Z"}}], "links": [{"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "This document as GeoJSON", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=plant+communities&f=json", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "alternate", "type": "text/html", "title": "This document as HTML", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=plant+communities&f=html", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection URL", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"type": "application/geo+json", "rel": "first", "title": "items (first)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=plant+communities&", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "last", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "items (last)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=plant+communities&offset=5", "hreflang": "en-US"}], "numberMatched": 5, "numberReturned": 5, "distributedFeatures": [], "timeStamp": "2026-07-28T15:08:09.215658Z"}