Summary
Although an alarming rate of global biodiversity loss is occurring, the effects of belowground microbial diversity on soil functioning still remain uncertain and debated across numbers of experiments data. In this context, we synthesize and evaluate the impacts of microbial diversity loss on soil ecosystem functioning from published literatures, and elaborate the probable mechanisms of the different response in terms of soil general and specific functions. The results showed that the loss of microbial diversity decreases both specific (e.g. pollutant degradation, methane metabolism, pathogen control) and general functions (e.g. C and N mineralization, soil respiration, biomass production), indicating that functional redundancy may be overestimated, even for general functions. The processes
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