EFFECTS OF MANURING ON THE ARTHROPOD COMMUNITY IN AN ARABLE SOIL

An arable clay loam in the Piedmont region of the U.S.A. was amended with poultry manure for 5yr at rates up to 110t dry matter ha-1 yr-1. On four dates during the fifth year cores of the upper 7 cm of soil were removed and the arthropods extracted in a modified Tullgren apparatus. A total of 84 arthropod species were found, but most belonged to a few species of Acaridae which, along with some macrochelids, were added to the soil in great numbers in conjunction with the manure. The manuring also greatly increased the population of arthropods native to the soil, but made little change in their pattern of seasonal fluctuations. The distributions of certain arthropod taxa were correlated with physical and chemical soil properties and also with the distributions of other arthropod groups. Species diversity as measured by Simpson's C was greatly reduced by the manuring. Cluster analysis based on relative abundances showed a great deal of similarity among the plots receiving various amounts of manure and much less similarity between the manured and the unmanured plots. © 1979.