Soil meso-fauna community composition predicts ecosystem multifunctionality along a coastal-inland gradient of the Bohai Bay

Previous studies have determined the importance of soil biodiversity for maintaining ecosystem services and multifunctionality. However, the relationship between soil meso-fauna biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality in the real world has yet to be evaluated. In this study, the relationships between soil meso-fauna community compositions and ecosystem multifunctionality along a coastal-inland distance gradient were investigated, including 1 km (1T), 15 km (2T), 30 km (3T), 45 km (4T), and 60 km (5T) locations. Our results showed that the soil properties were significantly indicated a decreasing trend after the 3T line. However, the soil meso-fauna biodiversity indices were observed to have all reached the peak value at the 4T line. In addition, it was found that the soil meso-fauna biodiversity indices were highly correlated with the ecosystem multifunctionality. These findings further confirmed the fact that the contributions of the soil meso-fauna community biodiversity indices (59.34%) to ecosystem multifunctionality were as important as, or even more important than, those of the soil environmental factors (40.66%). Therefore, it was concluded that the variations in ecosystem multifunctionality were closely related to the changes in the soil meso-fauna community biodiversity. In other words, soil meso-fauna community compositions can be effectively used to predict ecosystem multifunctionality along coastal-inland ecosystems. These findings, are the first study to provide empirical evidence linking soil meso-fauna community compositions to ecosystem multifunctionality in real-world coastal-inland ecosystems. Certainly, future studies that combine multi-trophic levels and consider their interactions will be able to clarify the relationships between the below-ground soil fauna communities and ecosystem multifunctionality.