%A Yongheng Zhu, Xiaohui Zhang, Fei Shen, Lin Lu %T Community structures of soil fauna in reclaimed copper mine tailings and suburb forest land %0 Journal Article %D 2012 %J Biodiv Sci %R 10.3724/SP.J.1003.2012.10103 %P 725-734 %V 20 %N 6 %U {https://www.biodiversity-science.net/CN/abstract/article_7238.shtml} %8 2012-11-20 %X

Soil fauna were very important for the ecological reconstruction of mine tailings. We investigated community characteristics of soil fauna at two sites, including reclamated copper-mine-tailings (RCMT) and suburb forest land of reclamated copper-mine-tailings (SFL) in Tongling City to test and illustrate the value of soil fauna for mitigating the impacts of heavy metal pollution. In the spring of 2011, we established four transects (150 m) at the two sites and collected soil samples of macro-, meso- and micro- soil fauna from four depths (0-5 cm, 5-10 cm, 10-15 cm, 15-20 cm) at 13 30 cm× 30 cm sampling quadrats. Our results showed that at RCMT, the Acarina, Collembola and Nematoda were dominant groups; the Formicidae, Coleoptera larvae, Oligochaeta, Diptera larvae and Diplura were frequent groups; and the additional 16 groups were less commonly encountered. While at SFL the Collembola and Acarina were dominant groups and the Nematoda and Oligochaeta were frequent groups. Overall abundance of soil fauna at RCMT were significantly less than that of SFL (F=20.65, P<0.01), and number of faunal groups were lower at RCMT (F=5.88, P<0.05). We did not find a significant difference between the density of macro-soil fauna at RCMT and SFL, but found that the density of meso- and micro- soil fauna at RCMT was significantly lower than that of SFL (F=29.99, P<0.01). The Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) at RCMT was higher than that of SFL (F=24.06, P<0.01), but DG diversity index was lower at RCMT compared to SFL (F=4.75, P<0.05). There was evident surface aggregation of soil fauna at RCMT, especially in the differences between the first layer and the other layers of the soil profile (Find.=17.80, Fgro.=33.33, P<0.01). Redundancy analysis indicated that soil macro-, dry-type, wet-type meso- and micro-fauna at different habitats were differentially affected by various environmental factors. At reclaimed land with higher copper concentrations, we found a higher greater number of Formicidae and Coleoptera and lower numbers of Collembola and Acarina adults. Our study suggests that the key of soil fauna recovery at reclaimed lands is to reduce the content of Cu and improve the microhabitat conditions.