Water availability rather than temperature control soil fauna community structure and prey-predator interactions

The ongoing climate change may strongly impact soil biodiversity with cascading effects on the processes they drive. Thus, it is of prime interest to improve our knowledge about responses by soil organisms such as collembolans to expected shifts in environmental conditions by considering communities comprising both detritivores and predators.
The aim of the present study was to evaluate how simulated climate change and predation under laboratory conditions alter a collembolan community.
To infer the impact of climate change, we applied a decreased level of soil moisture (60% vs. 30% soil water holding capacity) and an increasing air temperature (15 °C vs. 25 °C) to a collembolan community constituted by four species (Folsomia candida, Protaphorura fimata, Proisotoma minuta and Mesaphorura macrochaeta) exhibiting distinct functional traits, e.g. body size and furca presence, in presence or absence of a predatory gamasid Acari (Stratiolaelaps scimitus) during two months in a microcosm exp...