Scaling laws of altitudinal pattern of soil fauna diversity in Dongling Mountain, Beijing, China

Abstract

Identifying the complexity of diversity pattern of various taxa within a community is a challenge for ecologist. Scaling law is one of the suitable ways to detecting the complex ecological structure. In this study, we explored the scaling laws of soil fauna diversity pattern along an altitudinal gradient by multifractal analysis, and compared the difference of multifractal spectra between the litter and the soil layers. Consistent with results from plant communities in previous studies, there was power law scaling law for soil fauna diversity, i.e., richness, the exponential of Shannon's Diversity Index, and the inverse Simpson's Diversity Index. Moreover, power law scaling law also existed for the richness changes of different relative abundance species in both litter and soil layers. Although multifractal characteristics existed for both litter layer and soil layer of soil fauna diversity, the fractal structure of the diversity in the litter layer was more even than that in the soil layer, and the scaling properties of dominant and rare species showed different patterns in multifractal spectra between litter layer and soil layer. In conclusion, there were power law scaling laws for soil fauna diversity which had high richness and abundance along the altitudinal gradient, which would help us uncovering the spatial distribution mechanism of belowground biodiversity.