Abstract: An investigation was conducted on the soil meso- and micro-fauna in six representative sampling plots of three land-use types (forestland, grassland, and farmland) in Tianhe district, Guangzhou City. A total of 1623 individuals were collected, belonging to 26 groups. The dominant groups were Nematoda, Acarina,andTurbellaria, occupying 79.1% of the individuals collected. Both the group composition and the individual’s number of the soil animals differed in the six plots. Overall, the Shannon diversity index and complexity index of the soil animal community decreased in the order of forestland > farmland > grassland, and the Pielou evenness index and Margalef richness index were the highest in forestland. Through hierarchical clustering and non-metric multidimensional scaling, the soil meso- and micro-fauna in study area could be divided into four groups, and the first group was composed of three dominant species. Axis 1 and Axis 2 reflected the effects of soil physical/chemical properties and land-use type, respectively.

Key words: net primary productivity (NPP), successional stage, climatic responses.