The underappreciated roles of aboveground vertebrates on belowground communities

Abstract

In recent decades, evidence of interactions between aboveground and belowground (i.e., soil) subsystems has accumulated. The effects of aboveground vertebrates on belowground communities have traditionally focused on plant-mediated pathways, but we show that aboveground vertebrates impact belowground communities and ecological functions without plant-mediated pathways via both consumptive and non-consumptive processes. We then show that mobile, aboveground vertebrates have significant but often unrealized potential to structure soil communities from local to macroecological scales by linking aboveground and belowground food webs across habitats and ecosystems. Collectively, this synthesis of aboveground vertebrate effects on belowground communities integrates multiple ecological disciplines to advance a more comprehensive understanding of aboveground–belowground linkages across space and time.

Citation

Tomita, Kanji M.; Manlick, Philip J.; Makoto, Kobayashi; Fujii, Saori; Hyodo, Fujio; Miyashita, Tadashi; Tsunoda, Tomonori. 2025. The underappreciated roles of aboveground vertebrates on belowground communities. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 40(4): 364-374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2024.12.011.