Lijbert Brussaard's scientific contributions

... Soil fauna affects various soil biophysicochemical properties, including microbial diversity, soil structure/texture, and soil nutrients, via ingesting and transforming organic matter into more or less decomposable forms, mixing this organic matter with mineral soil, and grazing on microorganisms [6][7][8][9][10] . These processes are essential in driving biogeochemical cycles and may substantially affect soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics [11][12][13][14][15][16] . However, despite this recognized relevance of soil fauna to soil processes, knowledge of its involvement in the formation and stabilization of SOM is very scarce, except for that of earthworms [17][18][19][20][21][22] . ...

... It is therefore particularly important to integrate epiphytic habitats in studies of earthworm communities in tropical forests. The fact that some earthworm families are largely found in these habitats has a major implication for studies of phylogenetic community structure that aim to understand how evolutionary and ecological factors have shaped present-day earthworm communities (Brussaard et al., 2012). ...