Community dynamics and effects of disturbance on soil microarthropod communities across land types and spatial scales

This doctoral work demonstrates that: i) reduced competition via trophic niche differentiation plays a subtle yet significant role in structuring Oribatid mite communities at local spatial-scales; ii) short-term drought across spatial-scales and agricultural land-types causes relatively small yet detectable and ecologically significant shifts in microarthropod community structure, and iii) combined fertiliser and trampling pressure instigates minor shifts in community structure whilst also significantly affecting the abundance of key microarthropod functional groups.

Under glasshouse conditions, short-term drought imposed on communities previously subjected to fertiliser addition and trampling pressure in the field, revealed little legacy effects of field perturbations. However, drought did significantly affect the abundance of nearly all measured groups. Overall, this work demonstrates that observed trends in increased frequency and intensity of drought events will likely have a greater impact on soil microarthropod community dynamics and the functions they perform in soil food webs.