Land use and soil properties shifts soil fauna community complexity in subtropical ecosystems

ABSTRACT

The degraded areas in Southern Brazil are undergoing rapid conversion from abandoned fields into agroforestry system. Our focus was to investigate the impact of land use and soil properties on soil fauna and quality in an agroforestry system and a natural ecosystem. The agroforestry system had the presence of Cicadidae (0.1 ind trap⁻¹), Diplura (0.01 ind trap⁻¹), Gryllidae (0.2 ind trap⁻¹), Gyrinidae (0.07 ind trap⁻¹), and Larvae (0.3 ind trap⁻¹), and it presents lower SOC (less 44.3%) and higher total N (more 29.8%) and P contents (more 68.8%) when compared with the natural ecosystem. Richness and diversity declined (less than 16.3 and 31.8%, respectively) with increasing soil pH. Natural ecosystem showed the greatest diversity (H’ = 2.44) of soil fauna. A negative correlation was observed between diversity and soil pH (−0.91), and positive correlations among diversity and SOC (0.97), richness (0.88), and dominance (0.93). In conclusion, fauna abundance, precipitation, and soil pH played essential roles in soil quality through ecosystem services, habitat, and energy provision, which in turn promoted the entire soil food web. Thus, the findings in the agroforestry system and natural ecosystem help us to understand how land uses impact soil fauna, and soil quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroforestry system
• mixed ombrophilous forest
• soil biota diversity
• soil macroarthropods

Acknowledgements

We thank the GEBIOS (Soil Biology Research Group) for practical support. We thank CAPES and the Postgraduate Program of Soil Science of the Federal University of Paraiba for facilitating the post-doc studies of the first author. Tancredo Souza is supported by a Research fellowship from FAPESQ-Brazil.

Author’s contributions

We declare that all the authors made substantial contributions to the conception, design, acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data. All the authors participated in drafting the article, revising it critically for important intellectual content; and finally, the authors gave final approval of the version to be submitted to Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science.

Consent to Publish

We confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal. All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with submission to Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science. We have read and have abided by the statement of ethical standards for manuscripts submitted to Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).