Effect of drip irrigation on richness, abundance and diversity of soil arthropods

Abstract

Arthropods maintain soil ecosystem in variety of ways like breaking down the plant debris and broadcasting the microorganisms. The human induced changes in the agricultural land (i.e., irrigation methods, tillage practices and land use changes) have profound impacts on the richness, diversity and abundance of arthropods. The present study was carried out to assess the effect of drip irrigation on the richness, abundance and diversity of soil arthropods at three different Tehsils of District Bahawalpur i.e. Bahawalpur, Khairpur and Ahmedpur East. At each location, one flood and one drip irrigated guava orchard was selected. Weekly data of soil arthropods was recorded using 10 pitfall traps (at least 50 feet apart) in each orchard during April and May, 2022. The species richness, abundance, dominance and evenness of soil arthropods were slightly higher in flood irrigation orchards. However, Simpson, Shannon-wiener and chao-1 diversity indices did not vary significantly. Rank abundance curves showed that in all the drip and flood irrigated orchards, there was still some possibility of finding new species with the increasing sample size. Only one ant species Camponotus compressus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) constituted the major proportion of arthropods abundance in all the orchards whereas most of the species were very low in abundance. The results suggest that the soil arthropod diversity is not significantly affected with the flood and drip irrigation methods. Therefore, keeping in view the proven economic and water conservation advantages, the drip irrigation system can be adopted without harming soil arthropods diversity.