Exploring the natural and human-induced effects on the assemblage of soil microarthropod communities in Argentina

DIEGO OMAR FERRARO; GHERSA, C. M.

European Journal of Soil Biology

Año: 2006

1164-5563

In order to determine the independent and joint effects of: (1) crop management; (2) soil condition; and (3) site location on soilbiota assemblage, we examined the effects of several crop management and soil condition descriptors on the abundance and diversityof soil microarthropods in crop fields. Data were analyzed using linear regression, canonical correspondence analysis and variancepartitioning. Our results indicated that: (1) soil mites was the most affected group by crop management; (2) most of thevariance on microarthropod abundance remained unexplained as none of the descriptors were able to explain more than 10% oftotal species matrix variance; (3) tillage intensity resulted in higher variance explained of the species matrix than pesticide useor crop rotation; (4) soil carbon was the most influential factor among soil condition descriptors; and (5) a significant componentof species variation was accounted for by the spatially structured fraction of the explanatory descriptors and other underlying spatialprocesses. Following the methods proposed in this work, further studies based on the obtained results may increase their power todetect agriculturally induced effects on soil biota by including more soil fauna groups and more controlled environmental factors orby improving the description of the local scale spatial heterogeneity.