What creeps under our feet plays a key role in agriculture, the ecosystem and the climate. The soil harbours more than half of the world's biodiversity, yet many of the little animals - the so-called dark taxa - have hardly been researched. These include mites and pauropods, for example, which are often much smaller than a millimetre. "Our ability to study them has been severely limited until now," explains Sylvia Schäffer from the Department of Biology at the University of Graz. Together with Stephan Koblmüller and her team, she has developed a procedure that allows researchers to obtain DNA samples in just a few steps. The bodies of the sensitive organisms are preserved for further analyses.
"Our method is a milestone for soil monitoring, which in turn will benefit many areas," says Schäffer. With their new procedure, the Graz biologists have already been able to obtain comprehensive DNA data for many previously unknown species, which is available in an international reference database. Based on this genetic information and the external shape of the animals, they can now be clearly identified and new species precisely described. The research results were published in the journal Geoderma.
