Ecosystemic, climatic and temporal differences in oribatid communities (Acari: Oribatida) from forest soils

Abstract

Oribatid mite communities from 18 natural autochthonous forest soils in the Basque Country, belonging to five forest types, distributed along an ombrothermic gradient of five climatic regions were broadly studied. Forest type and climatic region together (45 % of the total variability) were important factors influencing the oribatid community. The local scale variable (forest type, 28 %) was about as determinant a factor as the regional scale (climatic region, 26 %), though together they accounted for just 9 %. By contrast, the influence of spatial distribution (geography) was not significant by itself but played an important role as a co-variable. Differences in community indices were detected only for species abundances, with holm oak showing the highest oribatid density and beech the lowest. The effect of the passage of time on oribatid communities was also analyzed by comparing recent communities to those of 19-26 years ago in the same forests. The community indices are influenced by the course of time when separate periods of time are compared. Although the recently studied forests apparently show the same conservational conditions as those studied in the past, they are less diverse.

Type of broadleaf forest matters most for ptyctimous mite communities (Acari, Oribatida) in Norway

“…The type of broadleaf forest had the greatest impact on variation of ptyctimous communities that is consistent with studies on mites in broadleaf forests in Ireland (Bolger et al 2014) and Spain (Corral-Hernández et al 2016). In contrast, oribatid communities from broadleaf forests in Germany were most affected by the regional locality (Erdmann et al 2012).…”

“…Based on our findings and earlier publications (Niedbała and Liu 2018;Seniczak et al 2019a, c) ptyctimous mites are now represented in Norway by five families and 31 species. The number of ptyctimous mite species found in present study (27) was higher than reported in extensive studies from other parts of Europe (e.g., Erdmann et al 2012;Corral-Hernández et al 2016). Although those studies only included samples from the forest floor, the number of ptyctimous mite species collected from the forest floor of Norwegian broadleaf forests was also higher (24) than reported from Germany (9 species) or Spain (18 species).…”

High Diversity of Mites (Acari: Oribatida, Mesostigmata) Supports the High Conservation Value of a Broadleaf Forest in Eastern Norway

“…A good example is the European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus L.) which requires dry and warm summers and does not occur in Western Norway [118]. In case of mites, a forest type might be the most important factor if only sites with milder climate are compared [37,123], but when climatic differences are large, then regional differences become more significant [27,124].…”

“…Another extensive study was carried out in ten broadleaf forests in Ireland, where two forest types, nine microhabitats and two sampling methods were applied, but despite higher sampling effort the number of mite species (Oribatida and Mesostigmata) was lower there and varied between 18-75 per forest [126]. When only the soil microhabitat was sampled [123,124,127], the number of species of Oribatida per 500 cm 3 sample was lower than in our study, which underscores the importance of sampling different microhabitats for biodiversity assessment [12,15,21,37,[128][129][130]. Many new species records for Norway come from specific microhabitats which illustrates the importance of sampling a broad range of microhabitats in studies of faunal inventories and diversity assessment.…”

Seasonal fluctuation of oribatid mite communities in forest microhabitats

“…Oribatid mite communities in forest soil systems are affected by small- and large-scale environmental factors ( Nielsen et al, 2008 ; Nielsen et al, 2010 ; Corral-Hernández, Balanzategui & Iturrondobeitia, 2016 ). Due to their small size and restricted dispersal ability, soil communities and especially oribatid mites therein mainly respond to local rather than regional factors ( Erdmann, Scheu & Maraun, 2012 ; Bolger et al, 2014 ; Corral-Hernández, Balanzategui & Iturrondobeitia, 2016 ). Spatio-temporal patterns of oribatid communities inhabiting different forest microhabitats have largely been neglected in the past ( Gergócs et al, 2011 ).…”