Abstract
Tropical forests are fundamental ecosystems, essential for providing terrestrial primary productivity, global nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. Despite their importance, tropical forests are currently threatened by deforestation and associated activities. Moreover, tropical regions are now mostly represented by secondary forest regrowth, with half of the remaining tropical forests as secondary forest. Soil invertebrates are an important component to the functioning and biodiversity of these soil ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how these past land-use activities and subsequent secondary forest developments have altered the soil invertebrate communities and any potential ecological consequences associated with this. DNA metabarcoding offers an effective approach to rapidly monitor soil invertebrate communities under different land-use practices and within secondary forests. In this study, we used DNA metabarcoding to detect community-based patterns of soil invertebrate composition across a primary forest, a 23-year-old secondary forest, and a 33-year-old secondary forest and the associated soil environmental drivers of the soil invertebrate community structure in the Maquenque National Wildlife Refuge of Costa Rica (MNWR). We also used a species contribution analysis (SIMPER) to determine which soil invertebrate groups may be an indication of these soils reaching a pre-disturbed state such as a primary forest. We found that the soil invertebrate community composition at class, order, family, and ESV level were mostly significantly different across that habitats. We also found that the primary forest had a greater richness of soil invertebrates compared to the 23-year-old and 33-year-old secondary forest. Moreover, a redundancy analysis indicated that soil moisture influenced soil invertebrate community structure and explained up to 22% of the total variation observed in the community composition across the habitats; whereas soil invertebrate richness was structured by soil microbial biomass carbon (C) (Cmic) and explained up to 52% of the invertebrate richness across the primary and secondary forests. Lastly, the SIMPER analysis revealed that Naididae, Entomobryidae, and Elateridae could be important indicators of soil and forest recuperation in the MNWR. This study adds to the increasing evidence that soil invertebrates are intimately linked with the soil microbial biomass carbon (Cmic) and that even after 33 years of natural regrowth of a forest, these land use activities can still have persisting effects on the overall composition and richness of the soil invertebrate communities.
Highlights
Forests are important ecosystems for hosting biodiversity and for providing ecosystem services for both the natural world and for socioeconomic growth[1]
We asked three questions pertaining to the soil invertebrate community: (1) Are there differences in the soil CO1 community composition between a primary forest and two different secondary forests of different ages? (2) Which soil taxa are contributing to the differences in the community composition? (3) Which soil abiotic factor(s) is best explaining the differences in community composition? Here, we provide evidence that two different ages of secondary forest and a primary forest have relatively different soil invertebrate community compositions, and that even after 33 years of natural forest regrowth, secondary forest soils do not harbor as much soil invertebrate richness in comparison to the primary forest soils
The results showed that soil invertebrate community composition is different, and even 33 years of natural regrowth can have consequences on the soil invertebrate community that develops under these conditions and can result in community-level differences across primary and secondary forests
Summary
Forests are important ecosystems for hosting biodiversity and for providing ecosystem services for both the natural world (i.e. nutrient cycling) and for socioeconomic growth[1]. Previous land use histories are known to create persisting alterations to the plant communities, and affect various components in the soil such as soil texture and soil nutrient content and a vailability[14]. These legacy effects often cause significant reductions of essential soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) through the loss of vegetation and through soil degradation. This is especially important when considering foodweb structure in soil and the position of invertebrates as an intermediate trophic layer between microbial taxa and higher-level animals Despite their contribution towards soil biodiversity, extant studies regarding changes in the soil invertebrate community across regenerating secondary forests are substantially lacking[18]. Identifying which soil abiotic factors most strongly drive soil invertebrate community richness it is crucial to understand how to improve soil biomass development and secondary forest regeneration
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