Abstract
Interactions between the saprotrophic animal groups that strongly control soil microbial activities and the functioning of detrital food webs, such as earthworms and mesofauna, are not well understood. Earthworm trophic and engineering activities strongly affect mesofauna abundance and diversity through various direct and indirect pathways. In contrast, mesofauna effects on earthworm populations are less evident; however, their importance may be high, considering the keystone significance of earthworms for the functioning of the soil system. We studied effects of a diverse mesofauna community of a deciduous forest on two earthworm species representing epigeic (Lumbricus rubellus) and endogeic (Aporrectodea caliginosa) ecological groups. In microcosms, the density of total mesofauna or its separate groups (enchytraeids, collembolans, gamasid mites) was manipulated (increased) and responses of earthworms and soil systems were recorded. A rise in mesofauna density resulted in a decrease of biomass and an increased mortality in L. rubellus, presumably due to competition with mesofauna for litter resources. In contrast, similar mesofauna manipulations promoted reproduction of A. caliginosa, suggesting a facilitated exploitation of litter resources due to increased mesofauna activities. Changes of microcosm respiration rates, litter organic matter content and microbial activities across the manipulation treatments indicate that mesofauna modify responses of soil systems in the presence of earthworms. However, similar mesofauna manipulations could induce different responses in soil systems with either epigeic or endogeic lumbricids, which suggests that earthworm/mesofauna interactions are species-specific. Thus, mesofauna impacts should be treated as a factor affecting the engineering activities of epigeic and endogeic earthworms in the soil.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Jarosław Lasota and Maciej Zwydak (Uniwersytet Rolniczy w Krakowie) for soil description, Alexei Tiunov (Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS) for the performance of stable isotope analysis, Mikhail Potapov (Moscow State Pedagogical University) for checking the determination of Collembola species, Sergei Golovatch (Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS) for the language corrections, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. Special gratitude is sent to Alexia Hoste-Danyłow, Paulina Gieros and Magdalena Śniżko for assistance in the experimental work. The work was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Grant No 4023/B/P01/2010/38) and by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. The study was presented at the 16th Colloquium on Soil Zoology in Coimbra (2012), and we thank the participants for the discussion and comments.
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AVU originally formulated the idea and developed the methodology, AVU and KK conducted fieldwork, performed the experiments, analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.
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Communicated by Stefan Scheu.
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Uvarov, A.V., Karaban, K. Do alterations in mesofauna community affect earthworms?. Oecologia 179, 877–887 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3383-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3383-6