Response of Collembola and Acari communities to summer flooding in a grassland plant diversity experiment

Abstract

Flooding frequency is predicted to increase during the next decades in Europe. Therefore, it is important to understand how short-term disturbance events affect soil biota providing essential ecosystem functions and uncover factors modulating their response such as plant community composition. Here we report on the response of soil microarthropod communities (Collembola and Acari) to a severe summer flood in 2013, which affected major parts of central Europe. Collembola and Acari density and Collembola and Oribatida richness were strongly affected by the flood, but they recovered within three months. Effects of plant community composition on soil microarthropods disappeared after the flood, presumably due to homogenization of the field, but the effects of plant community were in a stage of being reasserted three months after the flood. Widespread, surface living and generalistic microarthropod species recolonized the field quickly. Prostigmata and Oribatida were more resilient or recovered to flooding than Astigmata and Gamasida. Long-term impacts, however, remain unknown and deserve further investigation.

Habitat preferences rather than morphological traits affect the recovery process of Collembola (Arthropoda, Hexapoda) on a bare saline–alkaline land

“…Our study showed that Collembola can recover to natural levels within 2 weeks, reinforcing the assumptions that microarthropods respond rapidly to (Chauvat, Zaitsev & Wolters, 2003) and recover quickly from environmental changes (Lindberg & Bengtsson, 2006;González-Macé & Scheu, 2018). However, in contrast to a previous study showing that surface-living (rapidly dispersing) Collembola recovered more often than species that lived at greater depths (Malmström, 2012), we found that the recovery ability of Collembola was related to their habitat preferences and environment rather than their dispersal type.…”

“…Collembola species with long legs and antennae, a well-developed furcula and a complete visual apparatus, for example, Entomobrya and Tomocerus, can disperse rapidly, whereas other Collembola species with reduced movement or visual organs, for example, Mesaphorura, are considered to have poor dispersal capabilities (Hopkin, 1997;Ponge et al, 2006). Collembola are quick recolonizers after disturbances such as flood, drought, and fire (Lindberg & Bengtsson, 2005;Huebner, Lindo & Lechowicz, 2012;González-Macé & Scheu, 2018). They have been proven to colonize new habitats either passively by wind or actively through locomotion (Dunger, Schulz & Zimdars, 2002) and may disperse at varying rates in different habitats (Auclerc et al, 2009).…”

Incorporation of mineral nitrogen into the soil food web as affected by plant community composition

“…Based on biomass estimates, the following mesofauna species were used for stable isotope analyses: Scheu, 2018;Sabais et al, 2011).…”

Microarthropods and vegetation as biological indicators of soil quality studied in poor sandy sites at former military facilities

“…The most common is the general evaluation of microarthropod occurrence in the field (Gruss et al, 2018;Twardowski et al, 2016), with Collembola and Acari accounting for about 95% of the total number of arthropods which live in the soil (Neher & Barbercheck, 1998). However, Collembola and Acari represent different ecological traits and can occupy different food web trophic levels (González-Macé & Scheu, 2018).…”