Landscape-scale distribution patterns of earthworms inferred from soil DNA

Assessing land-use effect on the diversity of soil biota has long been hampered by difficulties in collecting and identifying soil organisms over large areas. Recently, environmental DNA-based approaches coupled with next-generation sequencing were developed to study soil biodiversity. Here, we optimized a protocol based on soil DNA to examine the effects of land-use on earthworm communities in a mountain landscape. This approach allowed an efficient detection of earthworm diversity and highlighted a significant land-use effect on the distribution patterns of earthworms that was not revealed by a classical survey. Our results show that the soil DNA-based earthworm survey at the landscape-scale improves over previous approaches, and opens a way towards large-scale assessment of soil biodiversity and its drivers.

长期以来，评估土地利用对土壤生物群落多样性的影响一直受限于大区域范围内土壤生物的采集与鉴定难题。近年来，基于环境DNA（environmental DNA）结合下一代测序（next-generation sequencing）的研究方法被开发用于土壤生物多样性研究。本研究针对山地景观中的蚯蚓群落，优化了一套基于土壤DNA的实验方案，以探究土地利用的影响。该方法可高效检测蚯蚓群落多样性，且揭示了土地利用对蚯蚓分布格局的显著影响——这一影响在传统调查中并未被发现。研究结果表明，基于土壤DNA的景观尺度蚯蚓调查方案优于既往方法，为大规模评估土壤生物多样性及其驱动因子开辟了新路径。