Vegetation type mediates how urbanization reshapes the structure, function, and spatial variation of soil food webs

Urbanization represents one of the major anthropogenic alterations of the Earth's surface, with significant impacts on biodiversity and its functions. Soil animals are essential components of biodiversity, playing integral roles in terrestrial ecosystems. How urbanization reshapes soil food webs and affects their function and stability is largely unknown. We assessed the structure and function of soil food webs using stable isotope analysis and the energy flux approach in urban grasslands and woodlands in a subtropical city in China, using natural ecosystems with the same vegetation type as the reference. In urban woodlands, total biomass was 6 times higher, and energy flux was 2 times higher than in the reference natural forests, resulting in a 50 % lower energy turnover (energy flux to biomass ratio), and supporting longer food chains. By contrast, urban grasslands had similar total biomass, total energy flux, and turnover to wild grasslands, but both the bacterial-to-fungal ratio and..., , , # Vegetation type mediates how urbanization reshapes the structure, function, and spatial variation of soil food webs

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xs3](10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xs3)

## Description of the data and file structure

Urbanization represents one of the major anthropogenic alterations of the Earth's surface, with significant impacts on biodiversity and its functions. Soil animals are essential components of biodiversity, playing integral roles in terrestrial ecosystems. How urbanization reshapes soil food webs and affects their function and stability is largely unknown. Here, we explore the structure and function of the soil food web by combining stable isotope analysis and an energy flux approach to provide quantitative insights into how urbanization affects the soil biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships under different vegetation types. We collected soil animals from two major types of urban green space - urban woodland and urban grassland - alongside natural fo...,