Biodiversity in mountain soils above the treeline

作者：Nadine Praeg, Michael Steinwandter, Davnah Urbach, Mark A. Snethlage, Rodrigo Paidano Alves, M. E. Apple, Peter Othmar Bilovitz, Andrea J. Britton, Estelle P. Bruni, Ting‐Wen Chen, Kenneth Dumack, Fernando Fernández‐Mendoza, Michele Freppaz, Beat Frey, Nathalie Fromin, Stefan Geisen, Martín Grube, Elia Guariento, Antoine Guisan, Qiao‐Qiao Ji, Juan J. Jiménez, Stefanie Maier, Lucie Malard, Maria A. Minor, Cowan C. Mc Lean, Edward A. D. Mitchell, Thomas Peham, Roberto Pizzolotto, Andy F. S. Taylor, Philippe Vernon, Johan van Tol, Donghui Wu, Yunga Wu, Zhijing Xie, Bettina Weber, Paul Illmer, Julia Seeber · 发表于：Biological reviews/Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/brv.70028 · 被引用次数：19 · 研究领域：Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology、Geology and Paleoclimatology Research、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology

Biological diversity in mountain ecosystems has been increasingly studied over the last decade. This is also the case for mountain soils, but no study to date has provided an overall synthesis of the current state of knowledge. Here we fill this gap with a first global analysis of published research on cryptogams, microorganisms, and fauna in mountain soils above the treeline, and a structured synthesis of current knowledge. Based on a corpus of almost 1400 publications and the expertise of 37 mountain soil scientists worldwide, we summarise what is known about the diversity and distribution patterns of each of these organismal groups, specifically along elevation, and provide an overview of available knowledge on the drivers explaining these patterns and their changes. In particular, we document an elevation-dependent decrease in faunal diversity above the treeline, while for cryptogams there is an initial increase above the treeline, followed by a decrease towards the nival belt. Thus, our data confirm the key role that elevation plays in shaping the biodiversity and distribution of these organisms in mountain soils. The response of prokaryote diversity to elevation, in turn, was more diverse, whereas fungal diversity appeared to be substantially influenced by plants. As far as available, we describe key characteristics, adaptations, and functions of mountain soil species, and despite a lack of ecological information about the uncultivated majority of prokaryotes, fungi, an...