St John Mark G, Wall Diana H, Behan-Pelletier Valerie M
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1499, USA.
Ecology. 2006 Mar;87(3):625-33. doi: 10.1890/05-0380.
Few studies have considered whether plant taxa can be used as predictors of belowground faunal diversity in natural ecosystems. We examined soil mite (Acari) diversity beneath six grass species at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Kansas, USA. We tested the hypotheses that soil mite species richness, abundance, and taxonomic diversity are greater (1) beneath grasses in dicultures (different species) compared to monocultures (same species), (2) beneath grasses of higher resource quality (lower C:N) compared to lower resource quality, and (3) beneath heterogeneous mixes of grasses (C3 and C4 grasses growing together) compared to homogeneous mixes (C3 or C4 grasses) using natural occurrences of plant species as treatments. This study is the first to examine the interaction between above- and belowground diversity in a natural setting with species-level resolution of a hyper-diverse taxon. Our results indicate that grasses in diculture supported a more species and phylogenetically rich soil mite fauna than was observed for monocultures and that this relationship was significant at depth but not in the upper soil horizon. We noted that mite species richness was not linearly related to grass species richness, which suggests that simple extrapolations of soil faunal diversity based on plant species inventories may underestimate the richness of associated soil mite communities. The distribution of mite size classes in dicultures was considerably different than those for monocultures. There was no difference in soil mite richness between grass combinations of differing resource quality, or resource heterogeneity.
很少有研究考虑过植物分类群是否可作为自然生态系统中地下动物多样性的预测指标。我们在美国堪萨斯州孔扎草原生物站对六种禾本科植物下的土壤螨类（蜱螨亚纲）多样性进行了研究。我们检验了以下假设：与单一栽培（同一物种）相比，混播（不同物种）禾本科植物下的土壤螨类物种丰富度、丰度和分类多样性更高；与资源质量较低的禾本科植物相比，资源质量较高（碳氮比低）的禾本科植物下的土壤螨类物种丰富度、丰度和分类多样性更高；与同质混合（C3或C4禾本科植物）相比，异质混合（C3和C4禾本科植物一起生长）的禾本科植物下的土壤螨类物种丰富度、丰度和分类多样性更高，这里将植物物种的自然分布情况用作处理因素。本研究首次在自然环境中以一个超多样分类群的物种水平分辨率研究了地上和地下多样性之间的相互作用。我们的结果表明，与单一栽培相比，混播禾本科植物支持了一个物种更丰富、系统发育更丰富的土壤螨类动物群落，并且这种关系在深层显著，但在上层土壤层不显著。我们注意到螨类物种丰富度与禾本科植物物种丰富度并非线性相关，这表明基于植物物种清单对土壤动物多样性进行简单推断可能会低估相关土壤螨类群落的丰富度。混播中螨类大小类别的分布与单一栽培的分布有很大不同。不同资源质量或资源异质性的禾本科植物组合之间的土壤螨类丰富度没有差异。
