Mesofauna and Macrofauna in Soil and Litter of Mixed Plantations

Abstract

The cultivation of leguminous nitrogen-fixing tree species improves soil chemical properties, especially with regard to N, and has been identified to be ecologically and economically interesting in intercropped systems with Eucalyptus spp., although the effect of these mixed plantations on soil and litter invertebrates still is poorly understood. This chapter tries to elucidate how forest plantations affect the soil mesofauna and macrofauna. Our results showed that management systems and weather conditions are the main factors that affect the soil faunal community structure. In soil and in litter, the mesofauna community is strongly related to Acacia mangium, and these invertebrates are strongly modulated by the water content in soil. Under lower soil moisture, we verified higher mesofauna abundance in the soil and higher correlation between invertebrates and microorganisms; however, with even a little increase in soil moisture, most of the invertebrates preferred litter and, in this case, there was little correlation. Leguminous trees were associated with a higher abundance of soil macrofauna than Eucalypt plantations, especially with millipedes. In mixed plantations of Eucalypt and Acacia, there was a higher macrofauna abundance and diversity, since they are more comparable to native forests than to agricultural systems, because of less anthropogenic intervention.