The relationship between the organic matter composition of a forest floor and the structure of a soil arthropod community

Abstract

The relationship between the amount and conposition of organic matter of a forest floor and the structure of the soil arthropod community was investigated in a temperate mixed forest of beech and pine trees. Seven enivronmental variables, i.e. broad leaves, pine needles, twigs, roots, others, total organic matter (sum of broad leaves, pine needles, twigs and others) and water content, were related to the soil arthropods in the statistical analysis. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relation between environmental variables and total abundance of Collembola, Oribatida and Mesostigmata. Total abundance of Collembola and Oribatida did not show a clear correlation with total organic matter. Total abundance of Mesostigmata showed the positive correlation with broad leaves or total organic matter. The result in this study might be due to the fact that ‘organic matter’ treated in this study was the material which was left on the 2 mm mesh sieve, and most of small fragmental organic matter in the F or H layer was not included. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to relate the variables of the organic matter to the community organizations of Collembola and Oribatida. CCA ordination indicated that the total amount of organic matter was the most important variable for the organization of both communities. These results suggest that the amount and composition of organic matter influenced the community organization of soil arthropods in a mixed forest.