The Ecology Underground coalition: building a collaborative future of belowground ecology and ecologists

Microbial Ecology Exemplifies Building Ecology

Recent advances in molecular methods have dramatically improved knowledge of the microbial communities and their diversity in indoor environments. We have retrieved over 150 references with results of indoor microbial investigations and environmental factors. Representative papers are summarized here. The results show that buildings are complex, ecosystem-like, and that collaboration between mi...

A temporal approach to linking aboveground and belowground ecology.

Ecologists are becoming increasingly aware of the role of aboveground-belowground relationships in controlling ecosystem processes and properties. Here, we review recent studies that show that relationships between aboveground and belowground communities operate over a hierarchy of temporal scales, ranging from days to seasons, to millennia, with differing consequences for ecosystem structure a...

Darkness visible: reflections on underground ecology

1 Soil science and ecology have developed independently, making it difficult for ecologists to contribute to urgent current debates on the destruction of the global soil resource and its key role in the global carbon cycle. Soils are believed to be exceptionally biodiverse parts of ecosystems, a view confirmed by recent data from the UK Soil Biodiversity Programme at Sourhope, Scotland, where h...

Fractal Population Ecology Theory

Abstract Purpose - The aim of this paper is to describe the population ecology theory through fractal thinking, an emergent human operating system that is creative, adaptive, healthy, and evolutionary; furthermore, a parallel is drawn between the population ecology model and the fractal structure. Top-down hierarchies are typically characterized by command and control systems of the authority t...

Big data and the future of ecology