Community characteristics of macro-and meso-soil fauna in alpine forest-shrub ecotones in central and western China

The alpine forest-shrub ecotone is an important transition region in the vegetation altitudinal spectrum. To investigate the characteristics of soil fauna communities under different vegetation types in alpine forest-shrub ecotones, the soil fauna communities in the Gongga, Taibai, and Shennongjia mountains were investigated. A total of 1099 soil fauna belonging to three phyla, nine classes, and 26 orders were captured. Results showed that under different vegetation types, total density of soil fauna did not differ significantly between the coniferous and shrub forests. Soil fauna in the coniferous and shrub forests showed certain similarities in community composition at the order level, but community composition at Gongga differed from that at Taibai and Shennongjia. The densities of Collembola, Insecta, Chilopoda, and Oligochaeta differed significantly among the three forest-shrub ecotones. Average density of Diplopoda in the Shennongjia shrub forest was significantly higher than that in the coniferous forest, but there were no differences between vegetation types in the other two sites for the other main groups. Thus, results showed that there were no differences in soil faunatotal density among the three ecotones, but there were certain differences in community composition.