Effects of land use change on belowground biodiversity

Although not apparent to the naked eye, soil is actually one of the most diverse habitats on earth! It contains one of the most diverse assemblages of living organisms known to us, and the issues relating to belowground biodiversity (BGBD) are the same as those related to its more visible counterpart above ground. Its lower visibility, however, has led to less attention being paid to it in the past, especially as there is an absence of 'charismatic' species that attract attention. Yet, belowground biodiversity may be of direct relevance to thehealth of crops, trees and other plants that are desirable to man. So, special attention to the belowground parts of biodiversity may be justified. Giller et al. (1997) reported that a single gram of soil is estimated to contain several thousand species of bacteria alone. Of the 1 500 000 species of fungi estimated to exist worldwide remarkably little is known about soil fungi, apart from the common fungal pathogens and the useful mycorrhizal species which improve crops’ efficiency in taking up nutrients. Among the soil fauna some 100 000 species of protozoa (Box 1, Table 1) 500 000 species of nematodes and 3 000 species of earthworms are estimated to exist, not to mention the other invertebrate groups. These other groups include animals classified as mesofauna (‘middle-sized’ ones between 0.1 and 2 mm in length) like springtails and mites and macrofauna (‘larger-sized’ ones between 2 and 20 mm) like ants, termites, beetles and spiders

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