Advances in Soil Biology: The Soil Macrobiome

The concept of a “microbiome” is increasingly well-embedded in our scientific understanding, not just of soil communities, but also in other areas such as medicine. Driven forward by community-level genetic techniques, a deeper knowledge of microbial communities is shaping our understanding of how interventions affect the balance of organisms in a system, and is revealing links between microbial communities and ecosystem function. However, microbes are not the only inhabitants of soil. Communities of larger organisms – soil meso- and macro-fauna – inhabit the same world, but interact with it at different scales and timescales. This makes them potentially valuable indicators of a different set of soil conditions and functions than those revealed by microbes. This conference aims to showcase innovative approaches to exploring the soil macrobiome, revealing what it can tell us about soil conditions and function.