PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Biogeochemical Dynamics
This article is part of the Research TopicSilicon Pools and Fluxes in Terrestrial and Aquatic EcosystemsView all 9 articles
Unexplored biogenic silica pools in terrestrial ecosystems and their significance for silicon cycling
Provisionally accepted
- 1Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Müncheberg, Germany
- 2State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Xi'an, 710061, China, Shaanxi, China
- 3Division of Math, Analytics, Science and Technology, Babson College, Wellesley, United States
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The global silicon (Si) cycle, which is intricately linked to global carbon cycling through a variety of avenues, is defined by dynamic processes occurring in both terrestrial and aquatic systems. The biologic controls on Si cycling have traditionally focused either on aquatic ecosystems where photosynthetic diatoms consume large amounts of Si, or Si uptake by terrestrial vegetation, as land plants consume and recycle large amounts of Si. However, little is known about non-plant terrestrial Si cycling. In this Perspective article we outline the knowledge gaps in terrestrial non-plant biological Si cycling, highlighting the need for studies exploring the unexplored biogenic silica (BSi) pools in soil represented by bacterial and fungal silica, sponge spicules and diatom frustules, protozoic silica platelets, and clay-sized phytoliths. We suggest specific attention to how the proportions of different BSi pools in soil differ with land cover and climate. In this context, we call for specific method improvements to quantify different BSi pools in soil. In addition to quantifying these unexplored BSi pools, exploration of dissolution kinetics of various soil BSi structures is needed to assess their role in Si cycling. We are convinced that future research dealing with these aspects will substantially deepen our understanding of global Si dynamics. The corresponding results will certainly change our current view and introduce new key players in terrestrial biological Si cycling.
Keywords: bacterial silica3, biogenic silica6, Clay-sized phytoliths1, diatom frustules7, dissolved silica5, fungal silica4, sponge spicules8, testate amoeba platelets2
Received: 22 Jan 2026; Accepted: 05 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Puppe, Li and Carey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniel Puppe
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