Figure 3.

Change in soil communities in response to environmental stressors

Change in soil communities in response to environmental stressors associated with (A) climate change, (B) land-use intensification, (C) pollution, and (D) nutrient enrichment.

In (B), the estimate for macro- and meso-fauna is shown in black, and micro-fauna in gray as body size remained as an additive term in the model. Hedges’ g was used as the effect size in all models. Negative effect sizes indicate that the environmental stressor causes a reduction in biodiversity (measured using abundance, biomass, taxonomic richness, and Shannon’s diversity metrics), and a positive effect size indicates an increase in biodiversity. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Effect sizes where error bars do not cross the dashed vertical zero line, are significantly different from zero. The values of n indicate the number of cases of each stressor in the model, with values in parentheses indicating the number of publications. Gray shading is for enhancing readability only.