Soil

Soils – hidden species diversity

Our soils are full of life and diversity

Studying its mostly tiny inhabitants requires technology to extract them from their substrate, high-quality microscopes and many years of taxonomic expertise. The diversity in soil is unimaginably high: a teaspoon of soil contains thousands of species and more living organisms than there are people on our planet. This diversity is still very poorly understood, although without soil organisms many essential ecosystem functions such as the recycling of nutrients from dead organic material and the storage of water and carbon would no longer be fulfilled.