For decades, mechanistic soil organic carbon models such as MIMICS, Millennial, and MES-C have represented decomposition as an almost exclusively microbial affair. Litter falling to the ground is split into metabolic and structural pools, digested by microbial functional groups, and routed into dissolved carbon, particulate organic carbon, and mineral-associated organic carbon. Termites, despite being among the most abundant detritivores on Earth and occupying roughly 80 million square kilometers of habitat concentrated in the tropics and subtropics, have been entirely absent from these equations. The omission matters because field evidence has long shown that termites dominate deadwood breakdown in tropical forests, with exclusion experiments suggesting they account for 58 to 64 percent of wood decomposition in tropical rainforests.

The new framework extends the MES-C model by adding an explicit coarse woody debris pool and a parallel, termite-mediated decomposition pathway alongside the familiar microbial one. Three feeding guilds are represented: xylophagous termites that consume wood, fungus-growing termites that harvest plant residues through cultivated fungal combs, and soil-feeding termites that process partially decomposed organic matter. Carbon ingested by termites is partitioned among respiratory carbon dioxide, methane production, growth of termite biomass, and excreted residues. Two of those residues — frass, the finely processed and nutrient-rich waste that decomposes quickly, and necromass, the chitin-rich bodies of dead termites that break down more slowly — re-enter the soil as inputs to microbial and mineral-associated carbon pools.

A crucial subtlety in the model is the fate of termite methane. Between 20 and 80 percent of the methane produced inside termite colonies may be oxidized by methanotrophic microbes within mounds and galleries before it ever reaches the atmosphere, making net emissions highly sensitive to mound architecture, colony density, and soil conditions. The module therefore couples termite metabolism directly to microbial methane cycling, allowing methane that is consumed within mounds to still contribute to microbial biomass and carbon dioxide release. This level of mechanistic detail, the authors argue, is what allows termite processes to be represented without breaking the mass balance that global carbon models depend on.

To run the model globally, the team linked termite biomass to ecosystem productivity, using gross primary productivity as a proxy for the resources available to termite colonies. Potential habitat was constrained by a thermal mask that excludes regions where monthly minimum temperatures fall below minus eight degrees Celsius, consistent with observed limits on termite survival. Simulations across global vegetation classes reveal a striking biogeographic pattern. Tropical evergreen forests, with the highest mean termite biomass density of 8.9 grams of carbon per square meter, dominate every flux: they account for 733.4 teragrams of carbon consumed, 404.1 teragrams released as carbon dioxide, and 3.7 teragrams emitted as methane each year. Savannas, with somewhat lower biomass but vast extent, follow close behind.

Globally, the model estimates that termites release 864.7 teragrams of carbon per year as carbon dioxide — equivalent to roughly 3,171 teragrams of carbon dioxide, or about 3.2 to 4.7 percent of total global soil respiration — and 7.9 teragrams of carbon as methane, a figure consistent with the Global Methane Budget’s estimate that termites contribute around 1.8 percent of global methane emissions. At the same time, termites transfer 689.3 teragrams of carbon per year into labile and mineral-associated soil organic carbon pools, with 209.1 teragrams going to the more stable mineral-associated fraction. The carbon dioxide flux should not be read as an extra source on top of microbial respiration, the authors stress; rather, termites redirect a share of decomposition through a faunal route with different climate sensitivities.

That difference in sensitivity is where the climate implications become sharp. Microbial decomposition rates typically rise by a factor of about 2.2 to 4.6 for every ten degrees of warming, but empirical work on termites suggests their feeding and foraging rates can increase several-fold over the same range, corresponding to an effective behavioral temperature sensitivity close to a Q10 of seven. In other words, warming may disproportionately accelerate termite-driven decomposition and trace-gas fluxes. Model-based reconstructions indicate that termite methane emissions already increased during the twentieth century and may continue rising under warming and land-use change, positioning these insects as a potential amplifier of carbon-climate feedbacks in precisely the tropical and seasonally dry regions most vulnerable to climate shifts.

Sensitivity analysis identified which parameters matter most for taming the uncertainty. Termite ingestion capacity and biomass emerged as the dominant controls on flux magnitude, while the partitioning of consumed carbon among respiration, residues, and biomass governs the ultimate fate of processed carbon. Methane-related parameters, by contrast, had comparatively weak effects. Most of the uncertainty in the headline numbers stems from the wide range of ingestion rates reported in the literature, which points directly to the field measurements the authors say are needed next: biome-resolved termite biomass surveys, guild-specific ingestion rates measured under natural conditions, and better constraints on how termites split carbon between gas, waste, and body tissue.

The framework is deliberately minimal, and the authors are candid about its limits. Termite biomass is treated as uniform within grid cells even though colonies create intense local hotspots of consumption and gas exchange; interactions with competing or cooperating free-living microbes are not resolved; and the modeled inputs to mineral-associated carbon represent potential additions rather than guaranteed long-term storage, since mineral surface area and oxide content are not simulated. Evaluation also leans on a single global biomass synthesis from 1996 built on sparse observations. Even so, the consistency of the model’s spatial patterns with known termite biogeography, and the agreement of its flux magnitudes with independent empirical estimates, suggest the dominant controls are plausibly captured.

What the study ultimately offers is a template for a more complete theory of the terrestrial carbon cycle — one that moves beyond the microbe-centric paradigm that has shaped soil modeling for a generation. Because termites process about twelve percent of global coarse woody debris, models that ignore them may misjudge how long woody carbon persists in low-latitude forests, and because their activity peaks in warm, water-limited African savannas where microbial decomposition slows, they may buffer ecosystems against drought in ways current models cannot see. The authors propose that future frameworks aggregate soil fauna by shared substrate use and carbon effects, while keeping termites distinct, since no other faunal group combines massive litter processing with a direct biological source of methane. Embedding these six-legged engineers in next-generation Earth system models, the team concludes, is essential for predicting how the planet’s soils will store — or release — carbon as the climate warms.

Subject of Research: Integrating termite-mediated decomposition into global soil organic carbon and greenhouse gas models

Article Title: Ideas and perspectives: Beyond microbes – integrating termites into global soil carbon cycling models

Article References: Farooq, U., Pasut, C., Wang, Y.-P., Zanne, A. E., Flores-Moreno, H., Wijas, B. J., Forrester, D. I., England, J. R., Macdonald, B., Brown, Z. A., & Karunaratne, S. (2026). Ideas and perspectives: Beyond microbes – integrating termites into global soil carbon cycling models. Biogeosciences, 23(19), 7029-7041. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-7029-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/bg-23-7029-2026

Keywords: termites, soil organic carbon, carbon cycle, decomposition, methane, carbon dioxide, tropical ecosystems, savannas, Earth system models, climate feedbacks, biogeosciences, detritivores

The research team, led by Marianna Manali and Konstantinos Moraitis, analyzed 256 forensic cases discovered between 1999 and 2023 across diverse Greek landscapes. Of these, 62 exhibited clear signs of carnivore scavenging, while 194 showed no such evidence. The cases were classified based on tooth marks on the bones or characteristic patterns of destruction consistent with carnivore activity, with modifications from other animals such as rodents deliberately excluded. The scale of the dataset is significant because previous studies have reported scavenging in roughly 15 to 45 percent of forensic cases examined worldwide, yet systematic retrospective research of this kind remains scarce in Europe, where legal, ethical and religious restrictions have long forced scientists to rely on animal proxies such as pigs instead of actual human bodies.

The statistics reveal a striking geographic signature. Scavenged remains were recovered at sites with a mean population density of just 465 inhabitants per square kilometer, compared with 2,713 for non-scavenged remains — a difference that was statistically significant. Scavenged cases also occurred at significantly higher elevations, averaging 325 meters above sea level versus 156 meters for unscavenged remains. Most scavenged bodies were found in woodland areas, heathland scrubs and grasslands, while non-scavenged remains clustered in constructed and industrial habitats where human presence is pronounced. Large carnivores, the study notes, tend to avoid areas of high anthropogenic disturbance, a pattern confirmed by experimental work in Spain showing that carcasses placed in publicly accessible zones attracted far fewer large scavengers than those in restricted areas.

Perhaps the most intriguing pattern emerged from the Greek islands. While the Aegean islands accounted for 20.6 percent of non-scavenged cases, only 4.8 percent of scavenged remains came from there. The researchers attribute this to the island biogeography effect: smaller and more isolated islands support reduced species richness, with scavenger taxa such as the golden jackal severely constrained and large carnivores like the gray wolf entirely absent due to geographic isolation. Tourism-driven development has further reduced the undisturbed open land where remains could lie exposed to wildlife. Coastal proximity, however, played no protective role — canid scavengers including feral dogs, jackals and foxes are well-documented coastal foragers undeterred by the sea.

The study also quantified how scavengers reshape the skeleton itself. Using a four-tier scoring system across 21 anatomical regions, the team calculated composite completeness scores and found that scavenged remains consistently showed lower preservation. Most strikingly, the upper limbs — the humeri, forearms and hands — were significantly less complete in scavenged remains, while lower limbs showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups. This pattern directly supports the classic disarticulation sequence described by William Haglund from canid scavenging in the Pacific Northwest, in which the ventral thorax and upper extremities are targeted first, followed by lower limbs, then progressive disarticulation of the vertebral column. Upper limbs are rich in muscle and connective tissue, rarely protected by heavy clothing, and their shallow glenohumeral joints detach far more easily than the deep socket of the hip.

The microscopic geography of tooth damage proved equally predictable. In the cranium, destruction concentrated on the occipital condyles, mastoid processes and zygomatic arches, with the mandibular rami highly susceptible. On the scapula, the acromion, coracoid process and inferior angle were typically destroyed, sometimes leaving only the scapular spine behind. The pelvis lost the iliac crest, ischial tuberosity and pubic symphysis first, and in extreme cases only the acetabulum survived. In long bones, both proximal and distal epiphyses were affected with nearly equal frequency — regions rich in fragile trabecular bone that gives scavengers access to the nutrient-dense marrow inside. Bone loss, the study found, was a more frequent modification than discrete tooth marks, which appeared most often as punctures on the iliac crest and femoral head.

Timing matters enormously. Nearly all scavenged remains — 98.4 percent — were found exposed outdoors, since scavengers generally cannot access remains buried deeper than about 30 centimeters. Most scavenged cases were recovered within the first year after death and showed advanced skeletonization with remnants of dehydrated soft tissue, whereas most non-scavenged cases were discovered after more than ten years. The statistical analysis revealed something subtle: in non-scavenged remains, skeletal completeness declined steadily with increasing postmortem interval, but in scavenged remains this relationship broke down, becoming weak and non-significant. Scavenging, in other words, does not merely accelerate the natural loss of skeletal elements — it fundamentally rewrites the pattern of destruction, particularly during the first months after death, when the difference between the two groups was most pronounced.

The research also carries implications for trauma analysis, one of the most delicate tasks in forensic medicine. Tooth marks on bone can be mistaken for perimortem sharp force trauma or even gunshot wounds, and extensive scavenging can obliterate genuine evidence of injury. Interestingly, perimortem trauma was recorded in 30.6 percent of scavenged cases versus 12.4 percent of non-scavenged ones. The authors suggest a biological explanation: large carnivores such as canids and felids are behaviorally attracted to blood odor, including the volatile compound trans-4,5-epoxy-(E)-2-decenal, and blood may help them locate remains before insect larvae colonize the body and inhibit vertebrate feeding. The presence of injury, it seems, can actively draw scavengers to a body.

Because the study was retrospective, the exact scavenging species could not always be identified, but the morphology of the puncture marks suggests members of the canid family — gray wolves, golden jackals, red foxes and feral dogs, all of which roam Greece’s wild and peri-urban landscapes. Brown bears, wild boar, European badgers and beech martens are also capable scavengers in the region, and some case reports noted stray dogs in the vicinity of the remains. One remarkable indoor case involved fully skeletonized, commingled remains from an abandoned stone church, where the destruction of both epiphyses on most long bones suggested prolonged, undisturbed gnawing consistent with scavenger caching behavior.

For forensic investigators, the practical message is clear. When skeletal remains are missing upper limbs, show crushed diaphyseal edges or puncture marks on fragile trabecular regions, and were found exposed in rural, elevated terrain, vertebrate scavenging should be a leading hypothesis rather than an afterthought. Systematic surveying of the surrounding environment for drag marks, animal scat, game trails and scattered bones can then confirm the diagnosis and even identify the species involved. In a European context where such data are rare, this quarter-century of Greek casework offers forensic scientists a verified baseline for distinguishing the work of animals from the work of humans — a distinction on which investigations, and justice, can depend.

Subject of Research: Carnivore scavenging patterns on human remains in forensic anthropology cases from Greece

Article Title: Carnivore scavenging patterns in terrestrial contexts: a 25-year retrospective study of forensic anthropology cases from Greece

Article References: Manali, M., Karydi, C., Spiliopoulou, C., & Moraitis, K. (2026). Carnivore scavenging patterns in terrestrial contexts: a 25-year retrospective study of forensic anthropology cases from Greece. International Journal of Legal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-026-04029-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00414-026-04029-z

Keywords: forensic anthropology, taphonomy, carnivore scavenging, tooth marks, skeletal completeness, postmortem interval, Greece, canids, island biogeography, bone modification, decomposition, forensic science

The team drew on a rare scientific resource: a long-term rainfall manipulation experiment in eastern Australian grassland that had been running since 2014. On plots where rain-exclusion shelters had cut incoming rainfall by fifty percent for seven years, the soil itself carries a memory of prolonged drought, a legacy embedded in its chemistry and microbial communities. The researchers excavated soil from both droughted and ambient rainfall plots, transported it to the laboratory, and used it as the foundation for a carefully controlled growth-chamber experiment. This design allowed them to separate the historical imprint of drought from the immediate effects of reduced water availability, a distinction that most short-term studies cannot make.

Two common pasture species served as the protagonists: weeping grass, Microlaena stipoides, a native C3 grass with dense fibrous roots, and ribwort plantain, Plantago lanceolata, a forb that invests more heavily in shoots and tends to conserve resources under stress. Seedlings of each species were grown for twelve weeks in pots containing soil from the long-term droughted or ambient plots, maintained at either forty percent or seventy percent of water holding capacity, mirroring the field treatments. Crucially, the researchers added a twist: half the pots received a mesh litter bag containing roughly one gram of leaf litter produced by the same plant species, buried vertically in the soil to ensure direct contact with microbial decomposers. The other half received no litter, creating a clean contrast.

The measurement toolkit was correspondingly comprehensive. Plant root and shoot biomass were harvested and weighed separately. Soil nutrient pools were assessed using chloroform fumigation extraction, which distinguishes carbon and nitrogen locked inside living microbial cells from soluble pools available to plants. Microbial community composition was profiled using phospholipid and neutral lipid fatty acid analysis, biomarker techniques that assign signature fatty acids to broad taxonomic groups: Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, Actinobacteria, fungi, protozoa, and, via the neutral lipid 16:1 omega 5c, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Litter bags were reweighed to quantify decomposition as percent mass loss, and statistical models including redundancy analysis tied plant performance to microbial profiles.

The headline result is deceptively simple: drought consistently reduced microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen across both plant species, confirming that water stress limits the soil organisms that drive nutrient cycling. Yet litter addition significantly boosted microbial biomass carbon under well-watered conditions and increased most microbial biomarkers, particularly in pots planted with the grass. On the plant side, litter addition increased shoot biomass for both species regardless of watering, hinting that decomposing litter released nutrients that plants could capture. But the most striking findings emerged in the roots, where the story diverged sharply between species.

For Microlaena stipoides, litter addition increased root biomass under drought but decreased it under ambient watering, with the root-to-shoot ratio following the same pattern. This reversal suggests a fundamental shift in strategy. When water was plentiful and litter present, the grass apparently could afford to invest less in foraging roots, possibly relying more on symbiotic microbes to supply nutrients. Under drought, however, the combination of litter and dry soil pushed the grass toward heavier root investment, and the litter mass lost to decomposition correlated positively with both root biomass and the arbuscular mycorrhizal biomarker. In other words, under dry conditions the grass and its fungal partners appeared to work together to unlock nutrients stored in decaying leaf material, a genuine plant-soil biotic feedback rather than a simple fertilization effect.

Plantago lanceolata told a different tale. The forb showed higher litter mass loss overall, consistent with its nitrogen-rich, more readily decomposable leaves, and its biomass was broadly and positively associated with nearly every microbial measure, from bacterial biomarkers to microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen. This pattern suggests an ongoing, mutually beneficial exchange in nutrient cycling between the forb and the soil community. Even so, some nuances appeared: in the presence of litter under ambient conditions, biomarkers for Gram-positive bacteria and Actinobacteria declined, and under drought with litter, biomarkers for Gram-negative bacteria, protozoa, and arbuscular mycorrhizae dropped, hinting that litter could also shift microbial dynamics in ways that were not uniformly positive.

The redundancy analysis crystallized the contrast between the two species. While Plantago lanceolata biomass rose in tandem with microbial abundance across treatments, Microlaena stipoides shoot biomass was negatively associated with microbial biomass carbon, and its root biomass was negatively related to fungal and bacterial biomarkers. The authors interpret this as resource competition: when nutrients run short, microorganisms can immobilize inorganic nitrogen during decomposition, effectively hoarding it away from plant roots, and the grass responds by building more roots to grab nutrients directly. Yet even this competitive grass maintained one positive relationship, with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, suggesting that mycorrhizas occupy a special role as partners rather than rivals, particularly when litter provides a shared nutrient reservoir that fungal hyphae can penetrate.

Not every observation fit the researchers’ initial hypotheses. Contrary to expectations, Gram-positive bacteria and Actinobacteria biomarkers were actually higher under drought than under ambient watering in pots without litter, particularly with the grass, indicating that some microbial groups are biologically adapted to desiccation, or that stress induces shifts in fatty acid composition that inflate these biomarker signals. Litter decomposition was also faster under drought, an unexpected result that the authors attribute to microorganisms investing more effort in mining litter for carbon when other resources are limited. These caveats matter: fatty acid biomarkers can persist in dead cells, and the twelve-week pot experiment involved only thirty-two pots and two species, limitations the team acknowledges openly.

The broader implications reach well beyond the growth chamber. As climate change intensifies drought frequency and severity across many ecosystems, the finding that litter mediates drought impacts through species-specific shifts in plant-microbe interactions suggests that the composition of plant communities will help determine how grasslands respond. A pasture dominated by a grass like Microlaena stipoides may lean increasingly on mycorrhizal partnerships and litter decomposition to survive dry years, while forb-rich communities may sustain nutrient cycling through close coupling with the broader microbial community. The authors point toward litter manipulation as a potential management strategy to enhance drought resilience, while cautioning that long-term field studies with more species are needed. What is already clear is that the dead leaves on the forest and grassland floor are not debris; they are active participants in the living economy of the soil, and their role becomes only more critical as the climate dries.

Subject of Research: How leaf litter moderates drought effects on plant growth and soil microbial communities through species-specific plant-soil biotic interactions

Article Title: Drought impacts on plants and microbes are moderated by leaf litter via species specific shifts in plant and soil biotic interactions

Article References: Szejgis, J., Carrillo, Y., Dijkstra, F. A., Hassan, K., Maisnam, P., & Nielsen, U. N. (2026). Drought impacts on plants and microbes are moderated by leaf litter via species specific shifts in plant and soil biotic interactions. Discover Ecology, 2(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44396-026-00022-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44396-026-00022-3

Keywords: drought, leaf litter, plant-soil interactions, soil microbes, arbuscular mycorrhiza, Microlaena stipoides, Plantago lanceolata, PLFA, nutrient cycling, grassland ecology, decomposition, climate change

The recognition arrives at a moment when soil ecology is moving from the margins of biology toward the center of conversations about climate, food security and biodiversity loss. Soils are among the most species-rich habitats on Earth, and the organisms that inhabit them drive processes on which nearly all terrestrial life depends. Ashwood’s book takes readers on a vertical descent through the soil profile, beginning at the surface with plant litter and ending in the deep subsoil, introducing along the way what he describes as some of the world’s strangest inhabitants and the essential roles they play in nutrient cycling, agriculture and carbon storage.

Ashwood is a soil scientist with a research background in earthworm ecology who quickly broadened his interests to encompass the full diversity of soil invertebrates. He is also a passionate macrophotographer, and that visual obsession with the hidden majority of life runs through his approach to writing. In response to the award, he said he really enjoys science communication, telling anyone who will listen about the wonders of life belowground, often with the help of his macrophotography, and that this strong desire to pass on his love of soil ecology to as broad an audience as possible is what ultimately led him to write the book.

The judging panel emphasized the book’s success in making an invisible world legible. Hefin Jones, one of the judges for the prize, described it as an engaging and accessible exploration of soil biodiversity and its importance to ecosystems and human society, noting that its major strength lies in Ashwood’s ability to communicate complex ecological processes through vivid descriptions of the largely unseen organisms that sustain soils. Fellow judge Ken Thompson said there are jaw-dropping facts on every page and that Ashwood’s narrative is greatly enlivened by his personal encounters with soil life, adventures that lend the text an immediacy and excitement making it an entertaining read.

Understanding why a popular book on soil deserves ecology’s book prize requires appreciating just how much is happening beneath a single step. A handful of grassland soil can contain billions of microorganisms and hundreds of invertebrate species spanning bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes, mites, springtails, enchytraeids, earthworms and insect larvae. These organisms form a food web that decomposes organic matter, restructures mineral particles, regulates the flow of water and gases, and determines how much carbon is locked away versus released back to the atmosphere. Decomposition alone, the sequential breakdown of dead plant material by fungi, bacteria and their invertebrate grazers, is the process that returns nutrients locked in litter to forms that plant roots can absorb, effectively powering every forest and grassland on the planet.

The structural engineers of this underworld are the ecosystem engineers, a term most famously associated with earthworms, the group in which Ashwood began his research career. Earthworms ingest mineral soil and organic debris, mix them in their guts, and excrete casts that alter soil aggregation, porosity and microbial activity. Their burrows create macropores that channel rainfall into the profile, reducing surface runoff and erosion while giving roots low-resistance pathways to depth. Different ecological groups of earthworms occupy distinct niches, from litter-dwelling surface species to deep-burrowing anecic forms that pull organic matter down into permanent vertical burrows, and their combined activity can transform the physical architecture of an entire soil profile within years.

Below the reach of most earthworm activity lies the subsoil, the zone Ashwood’s book treats as its final destination. Subsoils are typically lower in organic matter and oxygen but enormously important as reservoirs of mineral nutrients, as sites of long-term carbon stabilization, and as habitats for specialized microbial communities adapted to scarcity. Carbon that reaches depth through leaching, root death or the transport of fine particulate organic matter can persist for centuries to millennia when protected on mineral surfaces or inside stable aggregates. The organisms that govern whether carbon is respired to carbon dioxide or stabilized in place are therefore directly implicated in one of the central feedbacks of the global climate system, which is a large part of why soil biodiversity has become a priority for researchers and policymakers alike.

Agriculture sits at the sharp end of these processes. Soil fauna and microbes underpin the fertility of farmland by mineralizing nitrogen and phosphorus, suppressing pathogens, improving water-holding capacity and building the aggregate structure that resists compaction. Intensive tillage, monoculture and agrochemical pressure can simplify belowground communities, and a growing body of research links that simplification to declining soil health. Books that translate this science for a general audience perform a function that technical literature cannot, building the public understanding and political will needed to treat soil as a living resource rather than an inert growing medium. The Marsh Ecology Book of the Year has a history of rewarding exactly this kind of influential communication, and the judges’ comments suggest Ashwood’s combination of rigorous content and personal narrative continues that tradition.

The prize itself reflects an unusual and durable model of partnership between a learned society and a charitable funder. The Marsh Charitable Trust supports a wide range of recognition schemes across conservation, culture and the arts, and 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of its collaboration with the British Ecological Society. Awarded to the book judged to have exerted the greatest influence on the science of ecology in any two-year period, the Marsh Ecology Book of the Year has become one of the most visible honors for ecological writing, and The World Beneath Our Feet is its 21st winner. Ashwood will receive the award in person during a ceremony at the BES Annual Meeting, which runs from 14 to 17 December 2026 in Birmingham and will bring together more than 1,500 ecologists to discuss the latest advances across the whole discipline.

For a field whose subject matter is literally underfoot, soil ecology has long struggled for visibility against charismatic megafauna and distant ecosystems, which makes this award more than a ceremonial pat on the back. It signals that the scientific community regards the communication of belowground biology as central to ecology’s public mission at a time when soils are being lost to erosion, degradation and sealing far faster than they can form. Ashwood’s descent from litter layer to subsoil offers readers a narrative structure for a world they will never see with the naked eye, populated by organisms whose quiet work cycles nutrients, feeds crops and stores carbon. If the judges are right that jaw-dropping facts crowd every page, the book may do for the soil what earlier classics of nature writing did for oceans and rainforests: make the invisible both vivid and worth fighting for. The World Beneath Our Feet is published by Hodder Press, with cover design by Holly Ovenden.

Subject of Research: Soil ecology and the recognition of popular science writing on soil biodiversity through the British Ecological Society's Marsh Ecology Book of the Year award

Article Title: The World Beneath Our Feet wins the British Ecological Society Book of the Year 2026

Article References: The World Beneath Our Feet wins the British Ecological Society Book of the Year 2026. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: soil ecology, soil biodiversity, British Ecological Society, Marsh Ecology Book of the Year, Frank Ashwood, earthworms, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, decomposition, ecosystem engineers, science communication, subsoil

A team of researchers led by Maria Moreno-Druet of Hasselt University, working with colleagues at the University of Namur, set out to test whether trait-based frameworks—a popular tool in ecology for predicting how organisms respond to environmental change—could capture how fungi react to short-term soil heating. Their experiment compared how six abundant and taxonomically diverse saprotrophic fungal species performed under two conditions: an ambient soil temperature of 18 degrees Celsius and a heatwave temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. Both values were chosen to reflect genuine summer soil conditions in a European dry heathland, rather than the exaggerated warming scenarios often used in laboratory studies.

The choice of temperatures matters. Much of the existing literature on microbial thermal responses relies on extreme laboratory conditions that bear little resemblance to what fungi actually experience during a natural heatwave. By grounding the experiment in realistic field temperatures, the researchers aimed to answer a practical question: when a soil fungus in a temperate heathland is suddenly exposed to a 7-degree jump, which of its observable characteristics change, and can those changes predict how fast the organism grows?

The team measured a suite of traits spanning fungal form and function, including intrinsic growth rate, mycelial density, metabolic activity, and the capacity to decompose complex organic compounds such as chitin. These traits were then analyzed both individually and in combination, allowing the researchers to construct a multivariate picture of how each species occupies what ecologists call trait space—the abstract landscape defined by all measured characteristics simultaneously.

The results revealed a striking degree of species-by-species variation. At both temperatures, the six fungal taxa occupied significantly different positions in multivariate trait space, confirming that these species are functionally distinct from one another. Temperature itself produced a modest but statistically significant shift in the overall trait structure of the community, but that shift was driven mainly by taxon-specific responses rather than by a uniform community-wide pattern. In other words, the heatwave did not push all fungi in the same direction; each species responded in its own idiosyncratic way.

That individuality extended to the single-trait level. Heatwave temperatures induced pronounced changes in individual traits, but these changes were again taxon-specific, and when the researchers averaged trait values across all six species, the mean responses were insignificant in most cases. This finding carries an important methodological warning for the field: studies that aggregate fungal responses at the community level may completely miss the biologically meaningful changes happening within individual species. A heatwave could substantially reshape the functional makeup of a fungal community even while community-level averages appear stable.

Perhaps the most surprising result concerned trait coordination. In plants, ecologists have long documented covariation among traits—species with high leaf nitrogen, for example, tend also to have high photosynthetic rates—which allows simplified trait schemes to predict performance. The researchers found no such covariation among the fungal traits they measured, suggesting a lack of coordination among fungal trait values. If fungal traits vary independently of one another, predicting a fungus’s overall response to warming from one or two easy-to-measure characteristics becomes far harder, and the multidimensional nature of fungal thermal biology must be taken seriously.

The study also probed whether trait changes could forecast growth. For most traits, the answer was no: shifts in trait values did not predict the intrinsic growth responses of the fungi under heatwave conditions. Three traits did show modest predictive power, however—chitin decomposition capacity, mycelial density, and metabolic activity. These characteristics, tied to how densely a fungus builds its network of hyphae, how actively it metabolizes, and how well it breaks down recalcitrant organic matter, may offer the most promising entry points for future trait-based models of fungal performance under warming.

The broader implications reach into climate science and soil carbon cycling. Saprotrophic fungi control the pace at which dead organic matter breaks down, which in turn regulates how much carbon is released from soils into the atmosphere. If heatwaves alter fungal trait expression in species-specific and multidimensional ways, then predicting soil carbon fluxes under future climate scenarios will require models that explicitly account for fungal functional diversity rather than treating the decomposer community as a uniform entity. The authors conclude that fungal trait responses to realistic warming are multidimensional and highly taxon-specific, and that temperature can reshape individual fungal responses independently of other environmental variables such as moisture or nutrient availability.

As heatwaves grow longer, hotter, and more frequent across Europe and beyond, the invisible fungal networks beneath our feet are being tested in real time. This study suggests that they will not respond as a single unit. Some species will accelerate their metabolism and decomposition work, others may slow or shift their growth strategies, and the net effect on nutrient cycling will be the sum of many divergent, species-level stories. Untangling those stories, trait by trait and species by species, is now one of the central challenges for scientists seeking to understand how soils will weather the climate of the coming decades.

Subject of Research: Effects of realistic heatwave soil temperatures on functional traits of saprotrophic soil fungi

Article Title: Exploration of the Effect of Heatwave Temperatures on Traits of Soil Saprotrophic Fungi

Article References: Moreno-Druet, M., Schrooten, J., Rineau, F., De Laender, F., & Soudzilovskaia, N. A. (2026). Exploration of the Effect of Heatwave Temperatures on Traits of Soil Saprotrophic Fungi. Microbial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-026-02886-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00248-026-02886-0

Keywords: heatwaves, soil fungi, saprotrophic fungi, functional traits, trait-based ecology, microbial ecology, thermal response, decomposition, intrinsic growth rate, chitin decomposition, mycelial density, soil carbon

Researchers from Sambalpur University, Terracon Ecotech, and the Government of Odisha set out to quantify litterfall production, standing litter biomass, decomposition rates, and nutrient fluxes in four sacred forests across the region: Andhari, Dedungri, Medha, and Papanga. Three of the sites are dominated by sal (Shorea robusta), while Papanga is dominated by Cleistanthus collinus. The forests lie within a tropical savanna climate zone, where annual rainfall ranges from 900 to 1,400 millimeters, almost all of it delivered during the June-to-September monsoon, and where pre-monsoon temperatures can exceed 45 degrees Celsius. That pronounced seasonality shapes nearly everything that happens on the forest floor.

Between January and December 2023, the team measured litter inputs monthly using one-square-meter collection pits established at least ten meters inside each forest boundary to avoid edge effects. The collected material was separated into leaves, twigs, branches, and miscellaneous fragments, then oven-dried and weighed. Annual litterfall ranged from 8.59 megagrams per hectare per year at Andhari to 11.32 megagrams per hectare per year at Medha, figures that sit comfortably within the global range for tropical forests and actually exceed values reported for several other tropical dry deciduous forests in India. Leaves dominated the mix, contributing between 80.65 and 83.35 percent of total litterfall, followed by twigs, branches, and other material.

The seasonal signal was unmistakable. Litter production peaked in March at all four sites, coinciding with the height of the dry season, when water stress triggers leaf senescence and abscission in deciduous trees. Statistical analysis confirmed that month-to-month variation within sites was highly significant, while differences among the four forests were not. In other words, climate and phenology, not site identity, are the primary engines driving litterfall in these ecosystems. Standing litter biomass followed the same rhythm, accumulating to a maximum in March and dwindling to a minimum during the rainy and post-rainy months of August through November, with annual means ranging from 2.39 megagrams per hectare at Andhari to 2.68 at Medha.

The speed at which that litter disappeared was the study’s most striking finding. Using the classic litterbag technique, the researchers placed 20-gram samples of mixed-species fresh leaf litter, collected during the February-March peak litterfall period, into 20-by-20-centimeter nylon bags with one-millimeter mesh and laid them on the forest floor in a completely randomized design. Six bags were retrieved from each site every month. Roughly 95 percent of the initial litter mass had vanished within six months at every site. The fitted decay constants ranged from 5.75 to 6.65 per year, corresponding to half-lives of just 38 to 44 days. Model-based extrapolation suggested that 99 percent decomposition would be achieved within 274 to 318 days, although the authors caution that these figures extend beyond the six-month observation window.

Litter turnover rates told a similar story. The ratio of annual litterfall to standing litter biomass, a standard index of how quickly organic matter cycles through the forest floor, ranged from 3.59 to 4.22 per year, equivalent to residence times of only 87 to 102 days. Those turnover rates are higher than values reported for tropical semi-deciduous, tropical dry evergreen, and tropical evergreen forests, indicating that these small sacred groves process organic matter unusually fast. The researchers attribute the rapid decay to favorable temperature and moisture conditions during the decomposition period, which stimulate microbial activity, possibly combined with relatively high litter nutrient quality.

That quality question was addressed through chemical analysis of the mixed-species litter. Initial concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium differed significantly among the four forests, with Papanga showing the highest nutrient levels and the most favorable stoichiometric profile. Correlation analyses revealed that initial nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were significantly associated with decomposition rates, while carbon content was not. The authors note an important caveat: lignin and cellulose, structural compounds that strongly regulate decomposability, were not measured, so the full biochemical picture of litter quality in these forests remains incomplete.

Nutrient release during decomposition followed a clear hierarchy: potassium was lost fastest, followed by nitrogen, then phosphorus. Potassium, highly soluble and prone to leaching, declined rapidly throughout the experiment, with release reaching 98.72 to 99.20 percent across the sites. Nitrogen loss ranged from 92.26 to 95.08 percent, and phosphorus from 80.54 to 95.34 percent after six months. Papanga recorded the highest total nutrient loss at 96.57 percent. Meanwhile, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations actually increased in the residual litter, a pattern the researchers attribute to microbial immobilization, in which decomposer organisms accumulate these nutrients in their own biomass before releasing them back to the soil. Carbon concentrations remained relatively stable at Andhari and Medha but declined at Dedungri and Papanga.

The study’s authors are candid about its limitations. There were no non-sacred control forests for direct comparison, so the work characterizes variation within sacred forests rather than testing the effects of sacred-forest protection itself. Repeated temporal observations were not analyzed with mixed-effects models, and the correlation results should be read as associations rather than causal claims. Still, the baseline data fill a genuine gap: while litterfall and nutrient cycling have been extensively documented in tropical evergreen forests and, to a lesser degree, in sacred groves elsewhere in India, comparable information for the dry deciduous sacred forests of Western Odisha had been essentially absent.

The implications extend beyond ecology into conservation policy. Sacred forests persist as biodiversity hotspots and providers of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, water regulation, and soil conservation, precisely because community restrictions limit timber extraction, grazing, and fuelwood collection. Yet pressures such as fuelwood harvesting, livestock grazing, and non-timber forest product extraction persist to varying degrees, with Andhari and Dedungri showing signs of moderate degradation while Medha and Papanga remain relatively well preserved. By demonstrating that these culturally protected patches sustain high litter production, rapid decomposition, and substantial nutrient turnover, the study provides quantitative evidence that sacred forests function as localized reservoirs of soil fertility in human-dominated landscapes. As land-use intensification continues across tropical India, the researchers argue, protecting these living laboratories of biocultural conservation may be one of the most cost-effective strategies for maintaining nutrient cycling and ecological resilience in dry deciduous landscapes.

Subject of Research: Litterfall production, decomposition rates, and nutrient cycling in tropical dry deciduous sacred forests of Western Odisha, India

Article Title: Litterfall dynamics and decomposition-driven nutrient cycling in sacred forests of Eastern India

Article References: Pradhan, A., Mansingh, A., Gopinath, J. S., & Ekka, N. J. (2026). Litterfall dynamics and decomposition-driven nutrient cycling in sacred forests of Eastern India. Discover Plants, 3(1), Article 412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44372-026-00892-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44372-026-00892-7

Keywords: litterfall, decomposition, nutrient cycling, sacred forests, tropical dry deciduous forest, Odisha, Shorea robusta, litterbags, soil fertility, ecosystem functioning, biocultural conservation, leaf litter

Computational thinking, a concept famously articulated by Jeannette Wing in 2006, refers to the ability to formulate and solve problems using models drawn from computer science. It encompasses abstraction, decomposition, generalisation, algorithmic thinking and evaluation, and it has been repeatedly linked to stronger problem-solving, pattern recognition and information selection. Because educational authorities now regard it as an essential competence, teacher educators face a pressing question: how do you cultivate computational thinking in people who will teach three- to six-year-olds, many of whom arrive at university with little or no programming background? The Spanish team behind StoryMat-Robot believed the answer might lie not in code alone, but in stories.

The premise of the project is deceptively simple. A StoryMat-Robot is a playful, interactive narrative starring a robot, which must move through a physical space, typically a mat decorated with settings, characters and obstacles drawn from an adapted story. The narrative must be coherently sequenced, synchronising the plot’s progression with the robot’s trajectory, while the robot overcomes playful challenges tied to the storyline. Participants in the study worked in groups of four or five to produce 38 such proposals, adapting works ranging from Hansel and Gretel, The Three Little Pigs and The Wizard of Oz to animated films such as Ratatouille, Up and Madagascar. Roughly 60 percent of the designs were based on children’s literary texts and 40 percent on films.

What makes the design process cognitively rich is the way it forces several distinct skills to operate simultaneously. Translating a plot into a visual, physical format demands abstraction: students must select the most relevant story elements, represent them graphically as a robot pathway, and adapt characters while preserving their defining traits. Breaking the storyline into narrative sequences, scalable challenges and structured robot movements exercises decomposition. Maintaining aesthetic and stylistic coherence with the original work, whether two-dimensional, three-dimensional or realistic, mirrors generalisation, and segmenting the story into curriculum-aligned educational challenges with clear objectives, feedback and timing draws directly on algorithmic thinking. Layered over all of this are transmedia competences, as students integrate digital resources, augmented reality applications and artificial intelligence tools into their mats.

To evaluate what the finished products revealed about their creators’ thinking, the researchers designed and validated a 24-indicator instrument organised into four dimensions and scored on a four-point rubric, from ‘not at all adequate’ to ‘very adequate’. Three independent raters, including an external researcher, assessed every StoryMat-Robot, achieving strong inter-rater reliability with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.874. An exploratory factor analysis confirmed the instrument’s validity, with three factors explaining 64.9 percent of the variance and a high internal consistency of alpha equal to 0.946. Statistical comparisons between literary-based and film-based designs employed the Mann-Whitney U test, complemented by effect sizes and confidence intervals.

The findings were encouraging across the board. Overall adequacy reached moderate-to-high levels, with decomposition scoring highest at 3.36, followed closely by algorithmic thinking at 3.34 and abstraction at 3.26, while generalisation lagged slightly at 2.98. The strongest single feature was the incorporation of educational challenges appropriate for early childhood education, rated at 3.69, suggesting that the trainee teachers excelled at embedding pattern-recognition tasks and age-appropriate problems into their narratives. In one adaptation of The Three Little Pigs, children were asked to select building materials; in the Ratatouille mat, they collected ingredients for the traditional dish. Students also showed a strong ability to adapt characters to the interactive format while preserving the essence of the original stories.

Interesting differences emerged between the two source materials. Designs based on literary texts proved more robust in spatial organisation: the logic of the robot’s pathways, the scaling of challenges, the alignment of tasks with the educational level and the overall mat design all scored significantly higher, likely because short, simple stories such as Hansel and Gretel often contain explicit routes that students could transfer directly onto the mat. Film-based designs, by contrast, were richer in digital integration, scoring higher on the use of artificial intelligence resources, the creation of augmented reality elements aligned with the narrative, the relevance of educational objectives, the functionality of digital tools and the inclusion of assessment procedures. The researchers attribute this to the greater multimodality of audiovisual discourse, which seems to prime designers toward technological enrichment and stronger pedagogical framing.

Not every dimension flourished equally. Generalisation proved the weakest component, and the integration of coding cards explaining the robot’s movement sequences was rated particularly low at 1.90 overall, revealing that trainee teachers struggle to make programming patterns explicit and transferable. The researchers also caution that the statistically significant differences between literary and film-based designs carried small or even negligible effect sizes, meaning neither format is categorically superior. Rather, the near-uniform presence of computational thinking skills across both groups suggests that the co-design process itself, grounded in Design-Based Learning, is the active ingredient. The study’s limitations are acknowledged candidly: it took place in a single institutional context, computational thinking was inferred from products rather than measured directly with pre- and post-tests, and students chose their own source works, a potential confounding factor.

The implications reach beyond one teacher-education classroom. The study reinforces a growing body of evidence that narrative creation, digital storytelling and educational robotics are powerful vehicles for computational thinking, and it demonstrates that these can be fused into a single, pedagogically meaningful activity rather than treated as separate strands. Because the resulting mats are ready-made classroom resources, the benefits flow in two directions: future teachers practise abstraction, decomposition and algorithmic sequencing, while the young children who eventually use the mats encounter the same skills through play. The research team now proposes testing the StoryMat-Robots with actual early childhood pupils aged three to six, to measure their influence on learning, motivation and computational thinking. If those trials succeed, the humble story mat may become a standard fixture in the effort to raise a generation that thinks computationally before it can even write its own name.

Subject of Research: Developing computational thinking in prospective early childhood teachers through robot-based transmedia storytelling design

Article Title: StoryMat-Robot: From Activating Narrative and Transmedia Competences in Prospective Teachers to the Development of Computational Thinking

Article References: StoryMat-Robot: From Activating Narrative and Transmedia Competences in Prospective Teachers to the Development of Computational Thinking. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-026-00544-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s13158-026-00544-7

Keywords: computational thinking, educational robotics, transmedia storytelling, teacher education, early childhood education, narrative competence, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, algorithmic thinking, abstraction, decomposition, design-based learning