Soil food webs are incredibly diverse, from viruses to rodents, arthropods and plant roots, but are too rarely approached in their entirety and many studies focus instead on a single group of interest. Soil food webs also largely determine soil biogeochemistry, yet numerous studies treat them as a "black box" when considering the effects of e.g. warming or increased snow depth. Therefore soil food webs and their biogeochemical impacts remain poorly understood, particularly so in remote areas such as the Arctic. Moreover, Arctic soils and the fate of their enormous carbon and nitrogen stocks are a major uncertainty in our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in a warmer world. Drivers such as glaciations and complex biogeographical history have deeply affected soil food webs across the Arctic, and continue to have profound impacts on soil functioning and biogeochemistry.
We aim to gather studies linking descriptive approaches of the soil food web with their biogeochemical impacts, not only in the Arctic but also in other cold environments characterized by glaciation history and strong biogeographical limitations, i.e. the Antarctic and glacier forefronts in alpine regions. We expect that putting together cross-taxa and interdisciplinary approaches to the soil food web and its biogeochemical impacts across analogue ecosystems will lead to stimulating discussions and perhaps to the discovery of common patterns in the establishment and functionality of soil food webs in post-glacial environments.