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Effects of changes in functional composition of soil communities on nutrientcycling are still not well understood. Models simulating community dynamicsovercome the technical challenges of conducting species removal experiments inthe field. However, to date, available soil food web models do not adequatelyrepresent the organic matter processing chain which is key for soil dynamics.Here, we present a new model of soil food web dynamics accounting forallometric scaling of metabolic rate, ontogeny of organic matter, and explicitrepresentation of nitrogen and carbon flows. We use this model to investigatewhat traits are best predictors of species effects on community productivityand on nutrient cycling. To do so, we removed 161 tropho-species (groups offunctionally identical species) one at a time from 48 forest soil food webs,and simulated their dynamics until equilibrium. Simulations revealed thatcombinations of traits better determine removal effects than single ones. Thesmallest species are the most competitive ones, but carnivores of various bodymasses presenting the highest connectivity and resource similarity could be keystone species in the regulation of competitive forces. Despite this, mostremovals had low effects, suggesting functional redundancy provides a highresistance of soil food webs to single tropho-species extinction. We alsohighlight for the first time that food web structure and soil fertility candrastically change species effects in an unpredictable way. Moreover, theexclusion of detritus and stoichiometric constraints in past studies lead tounderestimations of indirect effects and retroactions. While additional work isneeded to incorporate complementarity between detritivores, it is essential totake into account these mechanisms in models in order to improve theunderstanding of soil food web functioning.

Species traits and community properties explain species extinction effects on detritus-based food webs