soil-dwelling mites and especially gamasina (mesostigmata) are very important to soil ecosystems. they are one of the major groups rich in species and abundance. in order to study mesostigmatic mite fauna, soil samples were collected from different oak forests of lordegan region. the mites were extracted using berlese-tullgren funnels and then cleared in lactic acid and mounted in hoyer's mediu...

Faunal diversity is an indicator of soil amelioration. Estimating the population size or density of an animal species in an area is fundamental to understand its status and demography and to plan for its management and conservation. Considering this, faunal diversity in reclamed sodic land was monitored during rainy season 2000-01 at different locations of district viz., Aligarh, Etah, Fatehpur...

− Nutrient acquisition by plants occurs in an environment characterized by complex interactions between roots, micro-organisms and animals, termed the rhizosphere. Competition for mineral elements in this sphere is high. The rhizosphere processes are driven by photosynthetically fixed carbon released by roots either directly to mycorrhizal fungal symbionts or as exudates fuelling a wider spectr...

Plant leaf litter generally decomposes faster as a group of different species than when individual species decompose alone, but underlying mechanisms of these diversity effects remain poorly understood. Because resource C : N : P stoichiometry (i.e. the ratios of these key elements) exhibits strong control on consumers, we supposed that stoichiometric dissimilarity of litter mixtures (i.e. the ...

Arthropods at different stages of development collected from human remains in an advanced stage of decomposition (following autopsy) and from the soil at the scene are reported. The corpse was found in a mixed deciduous forest of Biscay (northern Spain). Soil fauna was extracted by sieving the soil where the corpse lay and placing the remains in Berlese-Tullgren funnels. Necrophagous fauna on t...

Muller (1879) was the first to recognize that soil animals play an important role in the development of soil. In fact soil fauna represents the most rewarding area of current biological exploration. Soil biota, constitutes the driving force of terrestrial ecosystems because they control the rate of turnover and mineralization of substrates. Yet they remain one of the least known biological fron...

*Correspondence: María Jesús I. Briones, Departamento de Ecología y Biología Animal, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain e-mail: [email protected] Terrestrial ecologists and soil modelers have traditionally portrayed the inhabitants of soil as a black box labeled as “soil fauna” or “decomposers or detritivores” assuming that they just merely recycle the deposited dead p...

The species composition of mesostigmatid mites in the soil and leaf litter was studied on the Szczeliniec Wielki plateau, which is spatially isolated from similar rocky habitats. A total of 1080 soil samples were taken from June 2004 to September 2005. The samples, including the organic horizon from the herb layer and litter from rock cracks, were collected using steel cylinders (area 40 cm2, d...

Pesticides are the important agrochemicals used for prevention of crops from pests. Their use has been largely increased in last few decades. The application of pesticides starts from the pre sowing stage. Different treatments include soil application, seed treatment, foliar spray, etc. Repeated applications of pesticides contaminate the soil. Soil is the most important site of biological inter...

The variation in bacterial, fungal and total microbial biomass and activity was studied together with the abundance of soil nematodes and microarthropods after the addition of substrates differing in nitrogen availability to a soddy-podzolic soil. The experiments were carried out in microcosms with native and defaunated soil to evaluate stimulatory and suppressive effects of the microfauna on s...