Community composition and cold tolerance of soil Collembola in a collapse karst doline with strong microclimate inversion

0448249 - BC 2016 RIV SK eng J - Journal Article
Raschmanová, N. - Miklisová, D. - Kováč, L. - Šustr, Vladimír
Community composition and cold tolerance of soil Collembola in a collapse karst doline with strong microclimate inversion.
Biologia. Roč. 70, č. 6 (2015), s. 802-811. ISSN 0006-3088. E-ISSN 1336-9563
Grant - others:VEGA(SK) 1/0199/14; VEGA(SK) 1/3267/06
Institutional support: RVO:60077344
Keywords : cold tolerance * collapse doline * karst landform * microclimatic gradient * soil Collembola
Subject RIV: EG - Zoology
Impact factor: 0.719, year: 2015

The study compared communities of soil Collembola along the inversed microclimatic gradient of the collapse doline of the Silická l'adnica Ice Cave (Slovakia) in spring and autumn of 2005. Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA and the Mann- Whitney test revealed significant differences in abundance between sites and both seasons. Significantly higher abundance means and species richness were observed at most sites during the spring compared with the autumn. NMS ordination documented a clear delimitation of communities with remarkably different soil microclimates. The community pattern of the coldest section of the gradient, with low species richness and high mean abundance, was analogous to communities living in the harsh alpine and polar soils. The collapse doline with inversed microclimate hosted a high number of species (72) and a broad variety of montane forms (13), thus documenting that these karst landforms enhance local diversity of edaphic Collembola and serve as local refugia of specialized cold-tolerant species. The cold tolerance of the four abundant species at the doline cold sites, namely Ceratophysella sigillata, Tetrodontophora bielanensis, Protaphorura armata, Desoria tigrina, was tested in the laboratory using one-hour exposition survival tests. Within a temperature range from -2.4 to -7.8°C, T. bielanensis was the most cold-sensitive species, with a lethal dose LD50 of -4.4°C, while D. tigrina was the most cold-resistant, showing LD50 of -5.8°C.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0251300