Marshland restoration benefits Collembola recruitment: a long-term chronosequence study in Sanjiang mire marshland, China.

Bing Zhang,Donghui Wu,Xin Sun,Yongjing Dou,Liang Chang

doi:10.7717/peerj.7198

Abstract

To examine the biodiversity restoration of marshlands after human-induced disturbances, a long-term chronosequence study of Collembola communities was completed that included cultivated treatment (marshes with 15 years of soybean cultivation; CU15), two restored treatments (with 6 and 12 years of agricultural abandonment; RE06 and RE12, respectively), and an intact marshland (IM) as a reference in the Sanjiang Plain, Northeastern China. Changes in the soil properties and Collembola communities under different treatments were analyzed. Soil parameters (i.e., soil organic carbon, available N, P and K, soil moisture) significantly increased from the cultivated treatment to the 6-year agricultural abandoned, and then 12-year agricultural abandoned treatment, indicating that the degraded soil began to recover after agricultural abandonment. The density, species richness and diversity of Collembola in RE12 were significantly higher than in RE06 and CU15, and even surpass the IM, indicating marshland restoration (after 12 years of agricultural abandonment) benefited recruitment and reconstruction of Collembola community. We found soil surface-dwelling Collembola recovered faster than eu-edaphic species, that is probably due to some common traits (i.e., parthenogenesis and fast dispersal) between epi- and hemi-edaphic species. The changes in the vegetation and soil properties during long-term soybean cultivation and agricultural abandonment were the key factors affecting the composition, density, and species richness of soil Collembola.

Highlights

Worldwide human exploitation and the conversion of ecosystems, including for agricultural practices and urbanization, have caused widespread biodiversity loss andHow to cite this article Dou Y, Zhang B, Sun X, Chang L, Wu D. 2019
Five Collembola species—Bourletiella sp. 2, Entomobrya sp. 2, Tomocerus nigrus, Desoria sp. 3, and Folsomia sp. 3—disappeared in the cultivated fields, and all of these species recovered in the restored wetlands (Table S3)
We found CWMBL increased at the farmland sites, which is indicative of a community that the decline in smaller size individuals of collembolan and the community turns to a K-strategy

Summary

Introduction

Worldwide human exploitation and the conversion of ecosystems, including for agricultural practices and urbanization, have caused widespread biodiversity loss andHow to cite this article Dou Y, Zhang B, Sun X, Chang L, Wu D. 2019. This is especially true in wetland ecosystems. The rate of abandonment of agricultural lands around the world began to increase exponentially since the 1950s because it was easier to restore natural wetlands lost compared with other human practices (Cramer, Hobbs & Standish, 2008; Mao et al, 2018). Many studies have explored the response of soil environmental factors and biological diversity to serious agricultural disturbances (Hernández et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2012), but few studies have focused on the dynamics of biodiversity—especially soil biodiversity recovery—after agricultural abandonment, with fewer using a long-term chronosequence approach

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