Abstract: A comparative study was conducted on the arthropod community in peach orchards with and without ground cover vegetation. In the orchard with ground cover vegetation, the individuals of beneficial, neutral, and phytophagous arthropods were 1.48, 1.84 and 0.64 times of those in the orchard without ground cover vegetation, respectively, but the total number of arthropods had no significant difference with that in the orchard without ground cover vegetation. The species richness, Shannon’s diversity, and Pielou’s evenness index of the arthropods in the orchard with ground cover vegetation were 83.733±4.932, 4.966±0.110, and 0.795±0.014, respectively, being significantly higher than those in the orchard without ground cover vegetation, whereas the Berger-Parker’s dominance index was 0.135±0.012, being significantly lower than that (0.184±0.018) in the orchard without ground cover vegetation. There were no significant differences in the stability indices S/N and S_d/S_p between the two orchards, but the N_n/N_p, N_d/N_p, and S_n/S_p in the orchard with ground cover vegetation were 0.883±0.123. 1714±0.683, and 0.781±0.040, respectively, being significantly higher than those in the orchard without ground cover vegetation. Pearson’s correlation analysis indicated that in the orchard with ground cover vegetation, the Shannon’s diversity index was significantly negatively correlated with N_d/N_p, S_d/S_p, and S/N but had no significant correlations with N_n/N_p and S_n/S_p, whereas in the orchard without ground cover vegetation, the diversity index was significantly positively correlated with N_n/N_pand N_d/N_p and had no significant correlations with S_d/S_p,S_n/S_p, and S/N.

Key words: Trifolium repens, peach orchard, arthropod, diversity, stability