Nutrient availability for plants depends on SOM mineralization. Consequently, SOM conservation is an important part of sustainable ecosystem management. Soil microbes perform most of SOM mineralization in many ecosystems. However, their community structure and activity are largely regulated by soil fauna first during gut transit and afterwards in faecal pellets.

The millipede P. laminata is a soil ecosystem engineer and the most abundant macro-fauna species in Japanese larch plantation forests. Most of its impact on soil functioning is probably mediated by its faeces. We conducted a long-term field study of available phosphorous and nitrogen dynamics in sub-adult P. laminata faeces. We incubated fresh faeces and control soil (food soil) in the surface soil of a larch forest plantation and sampled regularly during a 2 months. P. laminata had no effect on Phosporous but a strong effect on Nitrogen dynamics. The faeces contained between 5 and 1,28 times more ammonia than the control soil. Sub-adult P. laminata is active in the area of major activity of plant roots during all the growing season. Hence, sub-adult P. laminata is very likely contributing meaningfully to plant nutrition and ecosystem stability in Japanese larch plantation forests.