Myriapod (Chilopoda, Diplopoda) communities in hedgerows of upland agricultural landscape

Abstract

It is well established that hedgerows provide habitats, which cannot be found in otherwise coherent agricultural landscape. However, different organisms vary in their response to various environmental variables of hedgerows. The aim of this paper is to study how are the myriapod species richness and community composition related to biological and morphological parameters of farmland hedgerows. We expected diversity to be related to size of hedgerows and community composition to be primarily affected by their biological attributes. We studied myriapod communities in 20 hedgerows located in close vicinity of Žibritov village (the Carpathians, Slovakia) in Central European upland farmland. Characteristics of the hedgerows were either measured in the field or derived from GIS layers. We used univariate and multivariate correlation methods to investigate the effect of hedgerow characteristics on diversity and composition of myriapod communities. Surprisingly high taxa numbers of myriapods were found within small area. Richness of millipedes showed negative relationship with hedgerow plant community diversity, hedgerow length and soil depth and weak positive relationships with a degree of shrub layer defoliation. Centipede richness was mainly related to diversity of hedgerow tree layer. We did not find any significant relationship between centipede communities’ composition and environment. Length of hedgerows was the only variable showing significant relationship with millipede communities’ composition. Despite small area, hedgerows represent important habitats for several species of centipedes and millipedes and show specific composition of their taxocoenoses determined by hedgerows attributes. Farmland hedgerows appear to be important habitats for soil organisms, which may be further beneficial for surrounding landscape.

Soil Health and Arthropods: From Complex System to Worthwhile Investigation

“…Community structure and diversity of centipedes are affected by many variables, the most important of which are temperature and humidity [139]. In some cases, however, like in hedgerows in agricultural land, species richness can also be influenced by the nature of surrounding habitats (e.g., sites surrounded by arable land support poor species assemblage) [140]. Even soil structure influences Chilopoda communities, especially the abundance of groups that spend most of their life cycle under the soil and may depend not only on the degradation rate of organic matter, but also on the possibility of digging for shelter to avoid dehydration, like Geophilomorpha and Diplopoda [141].…”

“…Moreover, species composition depends on the surrounding habitats. Stašiov et al [140] noted that Diplopoda richness in hedgerows depends on dominant tree species, as well as the nitrogen content of humus. Generally, Diplopoda seem to be good bioindicators, able to discriminate between areas with different recovery ages, even if their significance for ecological restoration is not really understood yet.…”

Character of woodland fragments affects distribution of myriapod assemblages in agricultural landscape

“…Although number of trapped individuals seems to be rather low, very similar number of trapped centipedes (0.45 per trap per week) and millipedes (0.52 respectively) were recorded in hedgerows in Slovakia (Stašiov et al 2017) too. Moreover, the design of study, i.e., methods (the solely pitfall trapping) and term of study (dry summer months), was chosen with respect to more groups of soil macrofauna (spiders, ground beetles, woodlice) and was not aimed to describe myriapod communities in all details (Tuf 2015).…”

“…In the agricultural landscape, these elements fulfil many important functions. In addition to their importance in protecting against water and wind erosion (Burel and Baudry 1989;Baudry et al 2000;Stašiov et al 2017), they also represent a major source of invertebrates' biodiversity in the landscape (Diekötter et al 2007).…”

“…Centipedes (Chilopoda) are soil predators that feed on larvae and adults of other small invertebrates and thus significantly reduce the abundance of other invertebrates (Voigtländer 2011). Both these groups of myriapods are also sources of food for other animals (Stašiov et al 2017).…”