From August 22 to 26, the Japanese city of Nara held the XVII International Congress on soil zoology. The congress motto “Soil Biodiversity for Our Future Earth” could not reflect the relevance of the topic even better: our future literally depends on the well-being of the natural environment in general, and on the soil in particular.

Every four years the forum gathers scientists from all over the world who share their scientific achievements with their colleagues. This time there arrived participants from 30 countries – from Indonesia and New Zealand to Canada and Columbia. Russia was represented by 12 scientists from Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Tomsk and other cities. The largest group with the biggest number of reports came from the delegation of the A.N.Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution, where soil zoology traditionally belongs to the main research areas.

According to the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve’s source, two presented reports aroused great interest. One of them was prepared by the reserve employee Rimma Seyfulina, Ph.D., and was devoted to the arthopods. The authors of another report, N.A.Kuznetsova, Ph.D., and A.M.Saraeva, Ph.D., worked in the reserve as a part of scientific cooperation and told in their report about the smallest insects – collembolans.

Main photo — http://soilzoology.jp/icsz_ica2016/

The speech of A.N.Kuznetsova, Ph.D., MSPU, on her report “Spatial distribution of collembolans in coniferous forests”. Photo by R.Seyfulina.