Juan B. Jesús Lidón

TL;DR: It was found that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, displaying patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms, which suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and for the functions they provide.

TL;DR: In the microcosms enriched with homogenised topsoil, the microarthropods were just as numerous in both compartments or indeed even more numerous inside the cage, which shows that this material nullifies the negative effect of earthworms onmicroarthropod numbers.

TL;DR: The results indicate that different microarthropod taxa are affected unequally by the presence of the earthworms, and Physico-chemical perturbations produced by endogeic earthworms acting as ecosystem engineers, competition for organic matter and passive predation are discussed as possible causes of this negative effect.