›› 2005, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (6): 935-942.

• RESEARCH PAPERS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Community structure of soil collembolas in the middle and west plains of Jilin province

WU Dong-Hui, ZHANG Bai, CHEN Peng   

  1. Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Online:2005-12-29 Published:2005-12-20

Abstract:

The soil collembolas in the middle and west plains of Jilin province were investigated with the emphasis on such indices as individual density,number of groups,and community diversity,richness and evenness in relation to the types of land use, i.e., farm garden, farmland, Three-North Forest Shelterbelt, natural secondary forest and natural mowing pasture. The soil collembolas were extracted with Tullgren extractor and identified to the genus level with the aid of microscope. A total of 5 531 soil collembola individuals were captured, which fell into 2 sub-orders, 8 families, and 12 genera. Onychiurus, Folsomia, Acanthocyrtus, Xenylla and Coloburella were the dominant groups that accounted for 90.3% of the total individuals. A considerable difference in the number of individuals existed between the natural forest and other habitats affected by human activity. The collembolas were distributed evenly in different layers of soil profile in all habitats affected directly by humans for both samples collected in July and September, especially in July. In these habitats affected intensively by farming activity during the summer, more collembolas appeared in soil of the lower stratum. While the strong effects on the group richness were not observed in all habitats. These results suggested that the types of land use affected the species richness and abundance, and human activity had a significant impact on the soil collembola community. The characteristics of collembola community structures in different habitats were analyzed by using different indices, i.e., Shannon-Wiener Index, Marglef index and Pielou index. The agricultural activity reduced the collembola diversity. The difference of the collembolan community composition between the middle plain and the west plain of Jilin province was shown mainly by their difference in the dominant group density in all habitats.


 

Key words: Collembola, community structure, diversity, spatial distribution, habitats, land use