A universal pore-space constraint for soil life

Dataset posted on July 3rd, 2026, authored by Steffen Schlüter, Michael Bonkowski, Ulrich Brose, Nico Eisenhauer, Vincent J. M. N. L. Felde, Maik Geers-Lucas, Lara Hammer, John Koestel, Jing-Zhong Lu, Kyle Mason-Jones, Christian Mulder, Anton M. Potapov, Liliane Ruess, Stefan Scheu, Mengqi Wu, Hannes Schmidt The dataset includes all input data and the R code to reproduce the results in the publication "A universal pore-space constraint for soil life". The R code for data import, statistical models, and graphical output is summarized in a single file called "main_for_upload.R". It contains bookmarks for all figures in the main paper and the supporting information, in the order they appear in the paper, for easy navigation in RStudio. Change the working directory in line 32 to where the input data has been downloaded, before running the R script. The input spreadsheets are separated by topic: file content abundance_sub.xlsx Literature review of soil organism abundance with associated body size info and site properties; contains data tabs “abundance”, “abundance_summary”, “abundance_factors”, “abundance_log10”. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations binning_sub.xlsx Comparison of abundance and community-weighted mean body volume after two different binning methods for three selected studies. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations movement_sub.xlsx Literature review of soil organism dispersal rates with associated body size info and site properties; contains tabs “movement”, “movement_summary”, “movement_factors”. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations bodysize_sub.xslx Literature review of body width, body length and length-width-ratio used to estimate average body size traits per organism group; ; contains tabs “bacteria”, “protists”, “nematodes”, “microarthropods” capillary_theory_sub.xlsx Hydraulic parameters and associated water content and surface area for a range of matric potentials for eleven major soil texture classes; contains tabs “PTF”, “capillary bundle”, “literature” and “export”. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations fractal_sub.xlsx Literature review of surface fractal dimension with associated method and site properties. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations surface_area_sub.xlsx Literature review of pore surface area with associated voxel size, visible porosity, and site properties; contains tabs “surface”, “single_values”, “single_values_summary”, “single_values_A”, “single_values_B”, “multiscale_scale_summary”, “multiscale_single”. See tab “README” for the meaning of columns, including units and further explanations