Soil biodiversity is increasingly recognized as providing benefits to human health because it
can suppress disease-causing soil organisms and provide clean air, water and food. Poor …

Patterns of environmental spatial structure lie at the heart of the most fundamental and
familiar patterns of diversity on Earth. Antarctica contains some of the strongest …

Antarctic biodiversity faces an unknown future with a changing climate. Most terrestrial biota
is restricted to limited patches of ice‐free land in a sea of ice, where they are adapted to the …

Recent applications of molecular genetics to edaphic microbial communities of the McMurdo
Dry Valleys and elsewhere have rejected a long-held belief that Antarctic soils contain …

Glacier ecosystems are teeming with life on, beneath, and to a lesser degree, within their icy
masses. This conclusion largely stems from polar research, with less attention paid to …

Some of the coldest and driest permafrost soils on Earth are located in the high-elevation
McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica, but little is known about the permafrost microbial …

Given their dormancy capability (long-term resistant stages) and their ability to colonise and
reproduce, microscopic aquatic animals have been suggested having cosmopolitan …

The biodiversity of soil animals (fauna) is large, and fauna critically affect soil processes by
feeding and fragmenting plant materials and organic substrates. Soil fauna exist in food …

In this review we analyze the dormancy strategies of metazoans inhabiting “hostile to life”
habitats, which have a strong impact on their ecology and in particular on the traits of their …

Soil arthropod communities are highly diverse and critical for ecosystem functioning.
However, our knowledge of spatial structure and the underlying processes of community …