I really appreciate this as a summary of the literature on soil invertebrates, and for making much of it more accessible. It’s quite eye-opening to see how enormous the number of soil invertebrates are, and how it varies across biomes. I have a couple of questions:
I find it very surprising that the number of nematodes is higher in boreal forests than tropic ones. Shouldn’t NPP be much higher in tropical forests? Do you have any idea, then, why the number of nematodes is lower? Looking at the study by Rosenberg et al, I see tropical forests have higher numbers of arthropods—especially the larger termites, so it might just be that they exclude nematodes.
Since I’m wary of the assumption of net-negative lives, as I mentioned on the previous post, I like the focus on life expectancy. But I was a bit confused that this came in section 4, but sections 5 and 6 still focused on simply reducing total populations (on the assumption that doing so increases total welfare). So it’s not clear to me, if we focus on increasing life expectancy, what interventions that would point to for soil invertebrates.
*edit to correct my first question, which had overlooked your table
I really appreciate this as a summary of the literature on soil invertebrates, and for making much of it more accessible. It’s quite eye-opening to see how enormous the number of soil invertebrates are, and how it varies across biomes. I have a couple of questions:
I find it very surprising that the number of nematodes is higher in boreal forests than tropic ones. Shouldn’t NPP be much higher in tropical forests? Do you have any idea, then, why the number of nematodes is lower? Looking at the study by Rosenberg et al, I see tropical forests have higher numbers of arthropods—especially the larger termites, so it might just be that they exclude nematodes.
Since I’m wary of the assumption of net-negative lives, as I mentioned on the previous post, I like the focus on life expectancy. But I was a bit confused that this came in section 4, but sections 5 and 6 still focused on simply reducing total populations (on the assumption that doing so increases total welfare). So it’s not clear to me, if we focus on increasing life expectancy, what interventions that would point to for soil invertebrates.
*edit to correct my first question, which had overlooked your table