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Researches on plant-parasitic nematodes and marine nematodes have been implemented for a long time in the world. But studies on the group of free-living nematode in soil are very limited. The nematodes are the most abundant animals on Earth, filling all trophic levels in the soil food web.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Anh Duong has conducted research and data collection, built a database of soil nematodes in Vietnam for over 10 years. She has collaborated with 70 leading scientists in the field at 57 laboratories around the world to research and publish the work.
In the study, the scientists use 6,759 georeferenced samples to generate a mechanistic understanding of the patterns of the global abundance of nematodes in the soil and the composition of their functional groups.
The resulting maps show that 4.4 ± 0.64 × 1020 nematodes (with a total biomass of approximately 0.3 gigatonnes) inhabit surface soils across the world, with higher abundances in sub-Arctic regions (38% of total) than in temperate (24%) or tropical (21%) regions. Regional variations in these global trends also provide insights into local patterns of soil fertility and functioning.
These high-resolution models provide the first steps towards representing soil ecological processes in global biogeochemical models and will enable the prediction of elemental cycling under current and future climate scenarios.
