1. Characterization of soil fauna

1.1 Taxonomic diversity

Soil-dwelling fauna is one of the most diverse on Earth, with many species present, even those you might think of as aquatic. This is the case, for example, with sowbugs, which are in fact terrestrial crustaceans closely related to shrimps. Soil fauna is usually classified into three categories according to organism size: microfauna, mesofauna and macrofauna (figure 1 ). This classification has the dual advantage of being easy to understand and having ecological significance, since size also corresponds to the scale at which organisms influence soil functioning. By way of example,...