Effects of Long-Term Land Use Change on Soil Meso and Macro Fauna in the Southern Lake Wales Ridge, Florida

Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Lowman, Margaret

Keywords

Soil Arthropods, Scrub Quercus sp., Florida/Berlaise Funnel, Disturbance, Archbold Biological Station

Area of Concentration

Environmental Studies

Abstract

Soil organisms have only recently been recognized as important catalysts in soil processes such as decomposition, litter breakdown and food web regulators. These ecosystem services are vital to human existence and ecosystem health. This thesis examines scrub habitat at Archbold Field Station central in plots with varying land use regimes. Four habitats were surveyed for soil animal populations including: 1) three sites where disturbance is moderate to heavy, 2) one disturbed site is in pasture and 3) two disturbance sites are in land where tillage occurred 20-25 years ago. A total of 1766 arthropods were collected through Berlaise funneling, in 24 individual samples. I hypothesized that disturbed areas would have a lower diversity and abundance of soil macro arthropods. This was not the case with total mesofauna populations, which did not differ considerably between the control and experimental sites. Underneath Quercus sp., mesofaunal populations were similar, indicating that the aboveground flora is not a reliable indicator to predict belowground populations.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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