The emerging complexity of animal life in soil. Brent Emerson Island Ecology and Evolution Research Group Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología (IPNA-CSIC)

Título: The emerging complexity of animal life in soil

Ponente: Brent Emerson, Island Ecology and Evolution Research Group, Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología (IPNA-CSIC)

Resumen:

Soil organisms have been estimated to represent perhaps as much as 25% of all described living species worldwide. Thus it is not surprising that soil has been referred as the poor man’s tropical rainforest, or the third frontier after oceanic abysses and tropical forest diversity.  In this talk I will focus on one particular animal group that is characteristic of soils, the Collembola (springtails). The Collembola have been the subject of recent evolutionary genetic analyses that shed light on why this class has a worldwide distribution,  but is represented by very few species, many of which have very large geographic distributions when compared to other wingless arthropod groups. The results I will present a number of challenges for future investigations, and I also address how we might tackle these challenges.