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Community structure and biodiversity of soil macrofauna in reclaimed coastal tidal flat in Yancheng of Jiangu, East China in late winter.

GE Bao-ming**, ZHANG Dai-zhen, TANG Bo-ping, ZHANG Hua-bin, ZHOU Chun-lin   

  1. (Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Coastal Wetland Bioresources and Environmental Protection, Yancheng Teachers University, Yancheng 224051, Jiangsu, China)
  • Online:2013-12-10 Published:2013-12-10

Abstract: In March, 2012, an investigation with hand-sorted method was conducted on the soil macrofauna in five habitat types (virgin land, wheat field, bulrush land, poplar forest land, and metasequoia forest land) in a 30-year reclaimed coastal tidal flat in Yancheng of Jiangu, East China, aimed to approach the community composition and biodiversity of soil macrofauna in coastal tidal flat under effects of different land use types. Five quadrats (each with an area of 25 cm × 25 cm and a depth of 15 cm) were installed for each habitat. A total of 344 soil animals were collected, belonging to 16 orders and 3 phyla. The dominant groups were Hymenoptera (27.62%), Isopoda (16.60%), and Lepidoptera (13.08%). Both the Shannon biodiversity index (H’) and the Margalef richness index (R) of the soil macrofaunal communities showed a trend of poplar forest > metasequoia forest > virgin land > wheat field > bulrush land. Significant differences were observed in the abundance, taxa number, H’, and R of the soil macrofauna among the habitats (P<0.001). The cluster analysis showed that the soil macrofaunal communities could be classified as four groups, i.e., virgin land, wheat field, bulrush land, and forest land. The soil macrofaunal communities in the virgin land and forest land were more similar, but significantly different from those in wheat field and bulrush land. The clustering results were supported by the analysis of the minimum span tree with non-metric multi-dimensional scaling, showing that the biodiversity of the soil macrofaunal communities was affected by soil quality, vegetation characters, and human disturbances. It was considered that adopting the land use types with increased habitat complexity would benefit the maintenance of the biodiversity during the reclamation of coastal tidal flat.