Long-term succession of oribatid mites after conversion of croplands to grasslands
Introduction
Conversion of agricultural land into grassland is taking place in many regions of Europe (Stanners and Bourdeau, 1995). The gradual nature of this process creates landscape mosaics of grasslands at different stages of development. The change from arable land to grassland is known to significantly impact soils and soil related processes (Siepel, 1992). However, associated changes in the soil communities actually performing these processes are poorly understood (Brown and Gange, 1992, Koehler, 1998, Koehler, 2000, Skubała, 1999, De Deyn et al., 2003). A major aim of the study reported here was thus to fill this gap of knowledge by analyzing the response of oribatid mites to the conversion of arable land into grassland. Investigations were carried out by means of the ‘space-for-time substitution’ approach as a surrogate for a long-term study on mite succession (Pickett, 1989). This was possible through the simultaneous availability of grassland sites of different age that cover a time period of approximately 60 years (Waldhardt and Otte, 2003, Hietel et al., 2004).
We focussed on oribatid mites, since this taxon has proven to be a reliable indicator of agro-ecosystem processes (Behan-Pelletier, 1999). Though the sensitive response of oribatids to the conversion of grassland to arable land is well established (Lagerlöf and Andren, 1988, Krivolutsky, 1995), very little is known about the reverse process. A core question of our study, therefore, was how successional changes in aboveground biota affect the structure of the mite communities in soil. We expected dramatic changes in microhabitat conditions and food availability to cause major shifts in the functional structure of the mite community during early stages of the conversion process. Later stages of succession, in contrast, were expected to be mainly driven by ecomorph-specific responses to the increasing protection of the soil surface by vegetation cover. While, for example, soil-dwellers are much less exposed to microclimatic fluctuations than litter-dwellers, the former group is more sensitive to structural features of the soil than the latter (Krivolutsky, 1995).
Section snippets
Study region and sites
The study was carried out on 86 study sites located in the Lahn-Dill-Bergland (Hesse, Germany). Sites were situated within five administrative districts: Bottenhorn (BH, n = 16), Guenterod (GR, n = 18), Niedereisenhausen (NE, n = 15), Niederlemp (NL, n = 20) and Oberhoerlen (OH, n = 17). The altitude varies between 200 and 600 m a.s.l., with mean annual temperature ranging from 5 to 8 °C and mean annual precipitation ranging from 700 to 1200 mm. Dominating soil types are acidic regosols and moderately deep
Results
The abundance of oribatids markedly increased after the conversion from arable land to grassland and reached a level of saturation at age class 3 (29–40 years; Fig. 1). Surface-dwelling species were the only group that significantly responded to the factor ‘grassland age’ (Table 2), with the share of this group rapidly increasing at early stages of grassland succession (Fig. 2). Though this process slowed down at later stages, there was no indication found that the shift towards
Discussion
This study presents the first investigation of the long-term development of oribatid communities during grassland succession. Some very consistent patterns have been found. First, the positive response of oribatids at early stages in the conversion process reflects the release from the stress exerted by arable management. Then, saturation of abundance suggests strong limiting forces acting upon the oribatid community at intermediate and late stages of succession. There is no clear indication of
Acknowledgements
This study was carried out under the support of the SFB 299 ‘Land-use options for peripheral regions’ project funded by the DFG. We thank Tobias Purtauf and Dietmar Simmering for helping with the fieldwork and Silvia Nachtigall, Sabine Rauch and Susanne Vesper for sorting the mesofauna samples.
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