**Preface to "Impact of Agricultural Practices on Biodiversity of Soil Invertebrates"**

Soil fauna plays a key role in many soil functions, such as organic matter decomposition, humus formation, and nutrient release, modifying the soil structure and improving its fertility. In particular, soil invertebrates play key roles in determining soil suitability for agricultural production and realizing sustainable farming systems. This fauna includes an enormous diversity of arthropods, nematodes, and earthworms. However, they suffer from the impact of agricultural activities, with implications for the capacity of soil to maintain its fertility in the long-term and to provide ecosystem services. Some agricultural practices may create crucial changes in soil habitats and properties, with consequences for invertebrate biodiversity. In the few last decades, especially under intensive and specialized farming systems, a loss in soil ecosystem services has been observed, as a result of the reduction in the biological fertility with a decrease of both the abundance and taxonomic diversity of the soil faunal communities.

On the other hand, some agricultural practices, such as those based on crop rotation, minimum tillage, cover crops and soil-covering, can support sustainable soil management and promote useful soil fauna. Therefore, due to concerns about the sensibility of soil biota to the agricultural practices, there is an urgent need to develop sustainable management strategies, to realize a microclimate and habitats favorable for the biodiversity of soil invertebrates and to reduce the soil disturbance, such as that due to tillage or chemical input.

> **Stefano Bocchi, Francesca Orlando** *Editors*
