Bottom-up effects of plants on soil communities can be modified by the activity of exotic earthworms, by alteringresource availability for soil food webs through feeding, burrowing, and casting activities. The present study ex plored effects of plants (planting of shrubs) on soil micro-food webs (composition of soil microbial and nematodecommunities), and whether these effects were altered by the activity of exotic earthworms (exotic earthwormsaddition). Planted shrubs resulted in a non-significant increase of bacterial biomass and significantly increased theabundance of different nematode trophic groups and total nematode biomass, indicating that planted shrubs hadsignificant bottom-up effects on soil bacteria and nematodes. Planted shrubs decreased nematode diversity, evenness,and richness, but increased nematode dominance in the plots where the abundance of exotic earthworms was notamended. By contrast, these effects of shrub presence on soil biodiversity were not found in the plots that receivedexotic earthworms. In addition, planted shrubs increased the total energy flux to the nematode community. Bycontrast, the elevated activity of exotic earthworms mitigated the increase in total energy flux to nematodes in thepresence of shrubs, and increased the ratio of fungal to bacterial PLFAs. Both of these changes indicate reducedenergy flux in the plots with added exotic earthworms. Nematode diversity decreased, while nematode dominanceincreased with increasing total energy flux to nematodes, probably because few species benefited from high energyflux. Our study indicates that exotic earthworms can maintain soil biodiversity by reducing the energy flux throughsoil food webs.