Collembola of pulverised fuel ash sites in east London

Abstract

Collembola were extracted from surface layers of four lagoons in east London (UK) of the industrial waste pulverised fuel ash (PFA). One lagoon was subject to seasonal inundation, while the other lagoons were dry, and ranged from 4 to 40 years. Twenty-one species were recorded, with both species richness and community diversity increasing steadily with site age. Early successional species were primarily epi-edaphic, while eu-edaphic species were largely confined to the woodland phase of the succession. The first axis of a canonical correspondence analysis detected the difference between early and late stage sites, while the second axis separated out the wet lagoon community from the dry sites. The data include the first record of Isotoma riparia Nicolet for the UK.