Comparative Diversity, Abundance, and Community Pattern of Nematodes in Natural and Disturbed Habitats

Abstract

This work evaluates the diversity, and abundance of nematodes and their use as indicators of soil health in an area strongly influenced by industrial wastes (food, metal and paper industries). The relationships between trophic groups, coloniser-persister scale and nematode community indices as well as nematode indicators of soil elements and the relationships of soil elements with different habitats were investigated. Nematodes were recovered from the soil samples of fifty sites from five different habitats. The trophic groups, colonizer-persister scale, and nematode community indices were analysed and compared. To test the significance of the dataset, bivariate linear regression; several samples repeated measure test of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) have been performed. The Canonical Correspond Analysis (CCA); Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and clustering of habitats were performed to know the relationships between such variables among different habitats. Bacterial feeders with 15,582 individuals were found to be a highly diverse and most abundant group. The results indicated that the nematode diversity and abundance, trophic groups and coloniser-persister ratio were adversely affected by organically enriched habitats to food, metal and paper industries as compared to natural habitats. The habitats contaminated by industrial wastes were mainly dominated by bacterivores and fungivores of <i>c-p</i>2 class. Few colonizer genera were observed to be cosmopolitan and prevalent in all habitats. However, some genera showed specificity towards a particular set of conditions and were more or less endemic for specific habitats.