Collembolan communities in shrublands along climatic gradients in Europe and the effect of experimental warming and drought on population density, biomass and diversity
Keywords:
Collembola, climate, soil, ecosystem, communityAbstract
Sampling of arthropods from plants, soil surface and soil was carried out at six sites in shrublands across Europe as part of a multi-disciplinary, EU-sponsored ecosystem research project: ‘VULCAN: Vulnerability assessment of shrubland ecosystems in Europe under climatic changes’. Climatic gradients spanned from cold temperate heath- and moorland (Netherlands, Denmark, Wales) to Mediterranean maquis (Catalonia, Sardinia) and from moist moorland (Wales) to dry continental forest-steppe shrubland (Hungary). The ex- perimental setup at each site included three warming plots where radiation during the night was impeded, resulting in an average air temperature increase of 0.3–1.3 °C. (April–June 2003), three drought plots where precipitation was prevented during 1–4 months in the growing season and three control plots.
Collembolan biomass and, less distinctly, population density and average individual weight in the control plots decreased from the northern to the southern sites, suggesting a latitudinal cline controlled by tempera- ture or interaction between temperature and moisture. In contrast, species richness tended to increase from North to South. The extremely dry Hungarian site with low biomass and number of species differed from this pattern and fit into a moisture-controlled cline from humid Atlantic to dry continental climates. These observations may reflect long-term adaptations to climate.
Both warming and drought treatments resulted in significant effects on collembolan density and biomass. More significant effects were observed in the drought treatments than in the warming treatments. The most significant effects for total Collembola and individual collembolan species were found in the Dutch and the Spanish sites, while only few were found in the British, Hungarian and Italian sites. Nearly all significant effects of both warming and drought treatments were negative. Differential responses, i.e. negative, positive or unaffected, of individual species resulted in changes in community structure. The vertical distribution between plants, soil surface and soil showed an increasing proportion of collembolan biomass in the soil layer concurrently with a decreasing proportion in the soil surface layer from the northern to the southern sites. The same change in vertical distribution was observed in several sites as a response to the warming and drought treatments. It is concluded that the effects on collembolan communities resulting from clima- tic manipulations are very complicated and the result of many direct and indirect factors, partly acting in opposite directions.
References
Baquero, E. & R. Jordana (2008): Redescription of Entomobrya quinquelineata Börner, 1901 (Collembola: Entomobryidae) and description of three new species – Zootaxa 1821: 1–12.
Beier, C., B. Emmett, P. Gundersen, A. Tietema, J. Peñuelas, M. Estiarte, C. Gordon, A. Gorissen, L. Llorens, F. Roda, D. Williams, (2004): Novel approaches to study climate change effects on terrestrial ecosystems in the field: Drought and passive nighttime warming. – Ecosystems 7: 583–597.
Beier, C., B. A. Emmett, A. Tietema, I. K. Schmidt, J. Peñuelas, E. K. Láng, P. Duce, P. de Angelis, A. Gorissen, M. Estiarte, G. D. de Dato, A. Sowerby, G. Kröel-Dulay, E. Lellei-Kovács, O. Kull,
P. Mänd, H. Petersen, P. Gjelstrup, & D. Spano (2009): Carbon and nitrogen balances for six shrublands across Europe. – Global Biochemical Cycles 23: 1–13.
Bretfeld, G. (1999): Synopses on Palaearctic Collembola: Symphypleona. – Abhandlungen und Berichte des Naturkundemuseums Görlitz 71(1): 1–318.
Carapelli, A., F. Frati, P. P. Fanciulli & R. Dallai (2001): Taxonomic revision of 14 south-western European species of Isotomurus (Collembola, Isotomidae), with description of four new species and the designation of the neotype for I. palustris. – Zoologica Scripta 30: 115–143.
Convey, P., P. J. A. Pugh, C. Jackson, A. W. Murray, C. T. Ruhland, F. S. Xiong, & T. A. Day (2002): Response of Antarctic terrestrial microarthropods to long-term climate manipulations. – Ecology 83: 3130–3140.
Dollery. R., I. D. Hodkinson & I. S. Jónsdóttir (2006): Impact of warming and timing of snow melt on soil microarthropod assemblages associated with Dryas-dominated plant communities on Svalbard. – Ecography 29: 111–119.
Fjellberg, A. (1998): The Collembola of Fennoscandia and Denmark. Part I: Poduromorpha. – Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica 35. – Brill, Leiden, Boston, Köln: 183 pp.
Fjellberg, A. (2007): The Collembola of Fennoscandia and Denmark. Part II: Entomobryomorpha and Symphypleona. – Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica 42. Brill, Leiden, Boston. 264 pp.
Frampton, G. K., P. J. van den Brink & P. J. L. Gould (2000): Effects of spring drought and irrigation on farmland arthropods in southern Britain. – Journal of Applied Ecology 37: 865–883.
Gisin, H. (1960): Collembolenfauna Europas. – Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Genève : 312 pp. Gjelstrup, P. & H. Petersen (1987): Jordbundens mider og springhaler. – Natur og Museum, Naturhistorisk Museum, Århus (in Danish) Graham, R. W. & E.C. Grimm (1990) Effects of global climate change on the patterns of terrestrial biological communities. – Trends in Ecology and Evolution 5: 289–292.
Harte, J., A. Rawa, A. & V. Price (1996): Effects of manipulated soil microclimate on mesofaunal biomass and diversity. – Soil Biology and Biochemistry 28: 313–322.
Hodkinson, I. D, N. R. Webb, J. S. Bale, W. Block, S. J. Coulson & A. T. Strathdee (1998). Global change and arctic ecosystems: conclusions and predictions from experiments with terrestrial invertebrates on Spitsbergen. – Arctic and Alpine Research 30: 306–331.
Hågvar, S. & K. Klanderud (2009): Effect of simulated environmental change on alpine soil arthropods. – Global Change Biology 15: 2972–2980.
Irmler, U. (2006): Climatic and litter fall effects on collembolan and oribatid mite species and communities in a beech wood based on a 7 years investigation. – European Journal of Soil Biology 42: 51–62.
Jordana, R., J. I. Arbea, C. Simon & M. J. Lucíañ (1997): Collembola, Poduromorpha – Fauna Iberica 8. – Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid : 808 pp.
Jucevica, E. & V. Melecis, V. (2006): Global warming affect Collembola community: A long-term study. – Pedobiologia 50: 177–184.
Kennedy, A. D. (1994): Simulated climate change: a field manipulation study of polar microarthropod community response to global warming. – Ecography 17: 131–140.
Lindberg, N., J. B. Bengtsson & T. Persson (2002): Effects of experimental irrigation and drought on the composition and diversity of soil fauna in a coniferous stand. – Journal of Applied Ecology 39: 924–936.
Littell, R. C. , G. A. Milliken, W. W. Stroup, R. D. Wolfinger & O. Schabenberger (2006). SAS for mixed models, Second Edition. – SAS Press, Cary , NC.
Mateos, E. (2008): Definition of Lepidocyrtus lusitanicus Gama, 1964 species complex (Collembola, Entomobryidae), with description of new species and color forms from the Iberian Peninsula. – Zootaxa 1917: 38–54.
McGeoch, M. A., P. C. le Roux, E. A. Hugo & S. L, Chown (2006): Species and community responses to short-term climate manipulation: Microarthropods in the sub-Antarctic. – Austral Ecology 31: 719–731.
Parmesan, C. & G. Yohe (2003): A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. – Nature 421: 37–42.
Peñuelas, J., C. Gordon, L. Llorens, T. Nielsen, A. Tietema, C. Beier, P. Bruna, B. Emmett, M. Estiarte & A. Gorissen (2004): Nonintrusive field experiments show different plant responses to warming and drought among sites, seasons, and species in a north-south European gradient. – Ecosystems 7: 598– 612.
Petersen, H. (1975): Estimation of dry weight, fresh weight, and calorific content of various collembolan species. – Pedobiologia 15: 222–243.
Petersen, H. (1994). A review of collembolan ecology in ecosystem context. – Acta Zoologica Fennica 195: 111–118.
Petersen, H. & M. Luxton (1982). A comparative analysis of soil fauna populations and their role in decomposition processes. – Oikos 39: 287 – 388
Pflug, A. & V. Wolters (2001): Influence of drought and litter age on collembolan communities. – European Journal of Soil Biology 37: 305–308.
Potapov, M. (2001): Synopses on Palaearctic Collembola: Isotomidae. Abhandlungen und Berichte des Naturkundemuseums Görlitz 73 (2): 1–603.
Rusek, J. (1998): Biodiversity of Collembola and their functional role in the ecosystem. – Biodiversity and Conservation 7: 1207–1219.
Rusek, J. (2002) Do we have Cryptopygus-representatives (Collembola: Isotomidae) in Europe? – Pedobiologia 46: 302–310.
Sjursen, H., A. Michelsen & S. Jonasson (2005): Effects of long-term soil warming and fertilisation on microarthropod abundances in three sub-arctic ecosystems. – Applied Soil Ecology 30: 148–161.
Taylor, A. R., D. Schröter, A. Pflug & V. Wolters (2004): Response of different decomposer communities to the manipulation of moisture availability: potential effects of changing precipitation patterns. – Global Change Biology 10: 1313–1324.
Walther, G.-R., E. Post, P. Convey, A. Menzel, C. Parmesan, T. J. C. Beebee, J.-M. Fromentin, O. Hoegh- Guldberg & F. Bairlein (2002): Ecological responses to recent climate change. – Nature 416: 389–395.
Weltzin, J. K., M. E. Loik, S. Schwinning, D. G. Williams, P. A. Fay, B. M. Haddad, J. Harte, T. E. Huxman, A. K. Knapp, G. Lin, W. T. Pockman, M. R. Shaw, E. E. Small, M. D. Smith, S. D. Smith, D. T. Tissue & J. C. Zak (2003). Assessing the response of terrestrial ecosystems to potential changes in precipitation. – BioScience 53: 941–952.
Whittaker, R. J., D. Nogués-Bravo & M. B. Araújo (2007). Geographical gradients of species richness: a test of the water-energy conjecture of Hawkins et al. (2003) using European data for five taxa. – Global Ecology and Biogeography 16: 76–89.
Whittaker, R. J., K. J. Willis & R. Field (2001). Scale and species richness: Towards a general hierarchical theory of species diversity. –Journal of Biogeography 28: 453–470.
Willig,M. R., D. M. Kaufman & D. R. Stevens, D. R. (2003): Latitudinal gradients of biodiversity: Pattern, Process, Scale, and Synthesis. – Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 34: 273–309.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 SOIL ORGANISMS
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All articles from Senckenberg’s SOIL ORGANISMS Open Access scientific journal that are made available on the Senckenberg website (www.senckenberg.de) and also www.soil-organisms.org may be read, copied, distributed, and (in limited quantity) printed for non-commercial, private, scientific purposes.
In accordance with the German Science Foundation’s „Rules for the Safeguarding of Good Scientific Practice“, references to cited articles are to be complete and correct and furnished with a link to the website of the Senckenberg journal in question.
The Senckenberg Society for Nature Research (Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, SGN) is a member of the Leibniz Association (Leibniz-Gemeinschaft) and is therefore committed to the idea of Open Access as explained in the Berlin Declaration (Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge, Berliner Erklärung über den offenen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen).
Open Access is understood to mean the charge-exempt public access to scientific results via the internet. The users should be able to read, copy, print, search within, and reference the full text without limitation and to use it in any conceivable lawful manner without financial, legal or technical hindrance.
This applies also to the SGN, which publishes various scientific series. Some scientific journals are made available to the public via Open Acess in addition to printed copies.
