Abstract: Interactions between aboveground–belowground communities play an important role in regulating terrestrial ecological processes; however, the interactions between rice varieties, herbivory and the soil community are often ignored. A pot experiment with a full 2×2 factorial design was conducted to examine the impacts of the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) and rice variety (susceptible or resistant) on the soil nematode community. The results showed that, after nine days, aboveground herbivory significantly (P<0.05) increased total abundance, numbers of nematode genera and the number of free-living nematodes (such as bacterivores, fungivores, and predators), under the rice varieties susceptible to the brown planthopper (Guangsi and Shanyou63), whereas an opposite trend was observed under the rice varieties resistant to the brown planthopper (Shanyou559 and IR36). In the presence of planthoppers, herbivorous nematodes significantly increased under the most susceptible rice variety Guangsi but significantly decreased under the most resistant rice variety IR36. Both planthopper and rice variety had negligible influences on ecological indices of the soil nematode community, including nematode channel ratio (NCR), Shannon-Wiener index (H’), maturity index (MI), enrichment index (EI) and structure index (SI). This might be due to domination by bacterivores of the soil nematode community and the short length of expo-sure to aboveground herbivory for our pot experiment (only nine days). In conclusion, the brown planthopper strongly affects the abundance, composition as well as trophic structure of nematode commu-nity, but the direction (i.e. stimulation or depression) and magnitude of influences interacts with the rice variety. Our results imply that short-term aboveground herbivory may impose profound impacts on the structure and functions of rice paddy ecosystem.