Prof. Anton Potapov, holder of the Chair of Soil Biodiversity, jointly appointed by IHI Zittau and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, has been awarded one of the most prestigious European prizes for excellent young researchers: the ERC is funding his international research project "CARBONWEB" with around EUR two million over a period of five years. The aim of the project is, among other things, to assess the impact of soil fauna on ecosystem functions at a global level and to evaluate changes in soil food webs and their consequences under climate change scenarios.

Soil has been greatly underestimated

Soils are the secret giants of our ecosystems: They are home to at least half of the animal biomass and decompose around 90 percent of the plant biomass produced on land. "And still, the role of soils in the global carbon cycle and in other ecosystem functions has been greatly underestimated so far. In particular, the soil fauna that drive these processes are not sufficiently in the focus of science. Our CARBONWEB research project aims to change this and close knowledge gaps," explains Anton Potapov.

Soil organisms such as nematodes, springtails and earthworms regulate the structure and functions of the food web in the soil. By absorbing organic material, influencing microbial activity and changing the soil structure, they make a significant contribution to stabilizing soil organic matter - the second largest carbon store on earth. "Despite their central regulatory role, soil fauna are largely ignored in global models and monitoring programs. Only 0.3 percent of the macroecological data relates to the connection between soil animal communities and soil functions," says the researcher based in Görlitz.

In his new CARBONWEB research project, which is being supported by international experts as part of the Soil Biodiversity Observation Network (SoilBON), Potapov is looking to find out how large-scale environmental factors control the structure and function of soil food webs and how energy flows in these webs are linked to the carbon cycle. He and his team are also investigating the impact that soil fauna have on global carbon concentrations.

About Prof. Anton Potapov

Potapov began his academic career at Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he graduated with distinction in Soil Science with a specialization in Soil Zoology in 2011 and completed his doctorate in Ecology and Microbiology in 2015. His dissertation was devoted to the role of springtails (Collembola) in forest food webs and their specialization in feeding on different groups of microbes.

Following his time spent at research stations in Russia, he assumed a postdoctoral position at the University of Göttingen and the management of an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Potapov has already published 66 scientific articles in leading international journals, including high-ranking journals such as Nature, Nature Communications and Ecology Letters. He has received numerous awards, including the Emmy Noether Funding Program from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Gold Medal for Young Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Sokolov Prize for Ecology.

Contact

Prof. Anton Potapov
Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz
Tel.: +49 3581 4760 5545
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Judith Jördens
Press Office Senckenberg Society for Nature Research
Tel: +49 69 7542 1434
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