Abstract
Determining the identity and function of forest soil organisms is essential to understand their relative roles, but also to determine their resilience after environmental perturbations. These characteristics are scientific challenges because of the high biological diversity of forest soil organisms, but also because many of them currently remain unknown. In this context, this review presents a snapshot of the difficulty associated with soil organism characterization, the uniqueness of forest soils and methodological and conceptual developments of the last decade. This review also presents the progress in political consideration of soil biology and highlights recent projects related to soil biology and ecosystem services.