INPEDIV 2019-2022 Oribatida - influence of landuse on Oribatida community structure in adjacent grasslands

INPEDIV, an interdisciplinary joint project of 7 partner institutes, funded by Leibniz Competition, investigates the consequences of organic and conventional farming for biodiversity in protected areas focusing on land use effects on a broad range of plant and animal taxa. The 20 study sites are located in the Rhineland and in Brandenburg. The Soil Biodiversity Work Package was led by the Soil Zoology Department in Senckenberg Görlitz and studied the relative importance of local and landscape-level factors for diversity and abundance of soil invetebrates, i.e. Nematoda, Oribatida and Lumbricidae as well as soil-biological decomposition activities and how these patterns change along gradients of pesticide load and nutrient content in the soil - from farmland to adjacent protected grassland sites. Field sampling of 20 transects took place in springs of the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. Additional to the composition of faunal communities, we measured a number of soil physico-chemical parameters e.g., carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, particle size distribution, plant available nutrients, pH, soil moisture.