Soil meso‐fauna community composition predicts ecosystem multifunctionality along a coastal‐inland gradient of the Bohai Bay

Abstract Previous studies have determined the importance of soil biodiversity for maintaining ecosystem services and multifunctionality. However, the relationship between soil meso‐fauna biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality in the real world has yet to be evaluated. In this study, the relationships between soil meso‐fauna community compositions and ecosystem multifunctionality along a coastal‐inland distance gradient were investigated, including 1 km (1T), 15 km (2T), 30 km (3T), 45 km (4T), and 60 km (5T) locations. Our results showed that the soil properties were significantly indicated a decreasing trend after the 3T line. However, the soil meso‐fauna biodiversity indices were observed to have all reached the peak value at the 4T line. In addition, it was found that the soil meso‐fauna biodiversity indices were highly correlated with the ecosystem multifunctionality. These findings further confirmed the fact that the contributions of the soil meso‐fauna community biodiversity indices (59.34%) to ecosystem multifunctionality were as important as, or even more important than, those of the soil environmental factors (40.66%). Therefore, it was concluded that the variations in ecosystem multifunctionality were closely related to the changes in the soil meso‐fauna community biodiversity. In other words, soil meso‐fauna community compositions can be effectively used to predict ecosystem multifunctionality along coastal‐inland ecosystems. These findings, are the first study to provide empirical evidence linking soil meso‐fauna community compositions to ecosystem multifunctionality in real‐world coastal‐inland ecosystems. Certainly, future studies that combine multi‐trophic levels and consider their interactions will be able to clarify the relationships between the below‐ground soil fauna communities and ecosystem multifunctionality.