Spatial distribution of the epigeic species of earthworms Dendrobaenaoctaedra andD. attemsi (Oligochaeta: Lumbricidae) in the forest belt of the northwestern Caucasus

Anna Geraskina,Nikolaj Shevchenko

doi:10.3906/zoo-1902-31

Abstract

Evaluation of the spatial distribution of 2 ecologically similar, but different, in terms of their spatial ranges, earthworm species, D. octaedra and D. attemsi, in the belt forests of northwestern Caucasus were based on our own natural data and using geographic information system (GIS) modeling of modern potential distributions. The quantitative records of earthworms were collected in beech, deciduous, dark coniferous, coniferous-deciduous, and pine forests (1028 geographic locations). Of the most important microsites inhabited by the epigeic earthworms, 2 (plant litter and deadwood) were examined. It was demonstrated that there was high correlation of the 2 species with the humidity of the habitat and the presence of deadwood at different stages of decomposition, especially for D. attemsi, which lives mainly in deadwood in all of the forest types. The high correlation of these species to coniferous-deciduous forests and dark coniferous forests was demonstrated on both the basis of the field data analysis and the GIS modeling results.

Highlights

Potential species distribution modeling methods and identification of the most significant factors for the soil invertebrate spreading limitation (Crawford and Hoagland, 2010; Marek et al, 2012) have been increasingly used in modern soil zoology studies
D. octaedra and D. attemsi inhabited all of the examined forest types: coniferous-deciduous, dark coniferous, beech, deciduous, and pine (Figure 2), and were found in both the litter and deadwood (Figure 3)
Previous research on the lumbricofauna of northwestern Caucasus showed that epigeic species D. octaedra and D. attemsi inhabited practically all of the forest types (Rapoport, 2014; Rapoport and Tsepkova, 2015; Geraskina, Shevchenko, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Potential species distribution modeling methods and identification of the most significant factors for the soil invertebrate spreading limitation (Crawford and Hoagland, 2010; Marek et al, 2012) have been increasingly used in modern soil zoology studies. Despite reasonable approaches to the geographic information system (GIS) modeling method application for species distribution evaluation (including Maxent software), the number of similar studies for soil invertebrates is currently small, since the labor-intensive soil- and zoology-related methods of material collection limit the number of places for finding species (Smith et al, 2008). Application of the GIS modeling method with Maxent software for earthworm potential distribution has been demonstrated in a small number of studies (Marchan et al, 2015, 2016; Latif, 2017, Hughes et al, 2018). The functional role of the epigeic earthworm group is in their primary destruction of the litter (following the leaching or destruction of polyphenolic and other chemically resistant compounds)

Methods

Results

Conclusion