E.J. (Eva) Krab MSc.

Hey, I am Eva Krab, a PhD student at the Department of Ecological Sciences. During this PhD I am trying to get a step closer to answering the next questions: ‘Does climate change affect the diversity and spatial distribution of the soil fauna community? Can we understand why? And will these community changes have any effects on the functioning of the ecosystem?’ To answer these questions I study interactions between springtails, plant litter and abiotic factors such as temperature and moisture availability in peatlands in northern Sweden.

Research project

Although the direct contributions of soil invertebrates to the breakdown of dead organic material are modest, they have a disproportionally large indirect impact through their control over the ‘real’ decomposers; the microbial community. Gradients in microclimate and the quality of potential food sources largely determine the composition of the soil invertebrate community. However, these gradients are likely to change because of climate warming, increasing air and soil temperatures and altering moisture conditions due to changes in precipitation regimes and evapotranspiration rates. Shifts in soil invertebrate species distribution might have a substantial effect on decomposition because species’ traits and their vertical position in soils determine their effect on C and N cycling.

In my PhD work I am carrying out a number of experiments in Abisko (Northern Sweden) to study which factors determine the spatial distribution of springtails, our ‘model soil invertebrates’.  I also designed and am running a mesocosm experiment in which we have introduced and tracked stable carbon isotopes (¹³C) to study contributions of the microarthropod community and individual springtail species to the breakdown of dead organic material.

 A springtail…

Participants: Matty Berg, Hans Cornelissen, Richard van Logtestijn and Rien Aerts

Publications

Krab E.J., Oorsprong H., Berg M.P. and Cornelissen J.H.C. (2010) Turning northern peatlands upside down: disentangling microclimate and substrate quality effects on vertical distribution of Collembola. Functional Ecology 24, 1362–1369    

Krab E.J. Van Logtestijn R.S.P. Cornelissen J.H.C. and Berg M.P.. Reservations about preservations: storage methods affect d13C signatures differently even in closely related soil fauna. Methods in Ecology and Evolution doi: 10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00126 

Krab, E.J., Cornelissen, J.H.C., Lang, S.I., Logtestijn, R.S.P. van. (2008) Amino acid uptake among wide-ranging moss species may contribute to their strong position in higher-latitude ecosystems. Plant Soil 304: 199-208.