The response of invertebrate communities to a moisture gradient in artificial soils of Ukrainian steppe arid zone

Abstract

Animals were sampled within the experimental area using traps to investigate the spatial and temporal variation in abundance, species richness, and species composition of invertebrate communities. A total of 60 traps were operated simultaneously during each sampling period. Traps were emptied 26 times every 7-9 days each year. Plant water availability, precipitation, wind speed, air temperature (minimum, maximum, daily mean), air humidity, and atmospheric pressure were used as ecological predictors of invertebrate community status and structure. Two-dimensional geographic coordinates of sampling locations were used to create a set of orthogonal spatial variables based on eigenvectors. We used time series of sampling dates to produce a set of orthogonal eigenvector time variables. The moisture content in technosols was the most important factor determining the terrestrial invertebrate community's temporal dynamics under semi-arid climate and reclaimed ecosystem conditions. Each ecological group of terrestrial invertebrates is homogeneous in terms of moisture gradient (xerophilic, xerozoophilic, mesophilic) and has a specific set of patterns best explain the species response to water content in technosols. However, one should consider the fact that the species response to soil water content is influenced not only by soil water content but also by a complex of other environmental, temporal and spatial factors. That is why the effect of other factors on the species response must be extracted previously to find real estimations of the species optima and tolerance. This task can be solved using the constrained correspondence analysis (CCA) or constrained redundancy analysis (RDA) depending on the type of response to ecological factors prevailing in the community – monotone or unimodal. We found that in more dry conditions, the prevalent species responses are unimodal asymmetric, in moister – bimodal, and in moderate conditions, the distributions are symmetric unimodal. The asymmetric species response to soil moisture in different parts of the soil humidity range may be assumed as predominantly due to the abiotic factors in the gradient's aridest margin and due predominantly to the biotic factors in the most humid margin of the gradient.