Effects of soil fauna on litter decomposition

Abstract

Forest litter is the physical makeup part of forest ecosystem. The rate of decomposition of forest litter is low in temperate and cool temperate zones. There is important significance to search and utilize the function of soil animals, in order to probe the material circulation and energy flow in forest ecosystem. We selected three kinds of mesh bag with different mesh size, in which, large pore mesh bag is large enough to permit the activities of all kinds of soil animals, medium mesh bag is designed to exclude the function of soil macrofauna, while small mesh bag is small enough to exclude the effects of any kind of soil animals as far as possible. The decomposition time is three years. The studying results show that: the decomposing speed of the bags with big meshes, under functions of all kinds of soil animals, faster than the bags with medium meshes, under functions of medium and small soil animals, as well as the bags with small meshes that excluding all possibility of functions of soil animals; in the process of decomposition of litter, relationship of the litter lost weight with number of soil animals is not obvious clearly; the degree of functions of soil animals to soft litter higher than hard litter; according to the analysis of diversity index, no regular changes will happen to the diversity of soil animals as the time of decomposing samples lengthen.