Biodiversity of soil arthropods with emphasis on oribatid mites in three different tea agro-ecosystem with three differe
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Biodiversity of soil arthropods with emphasis on oribatid mites in three different tea agro-ecosystem with three different agronomical practices in Assam, India Somnath Roy 1 & Ranjida Ahmed 1 & Asok Kanti Sanyal 2 & Azariah Babu 3 & Dipsikha Bora 4 & Azizur Rahman 1 & Gautam Handique 1 Received: 10 April 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 # African Association of Insect Scientists 2020
Abstract Soil represents an important reservoir of biodiversity consisting of various forms of life and role in promoting soil health and fertility. The present study was undertaken to explore the diversity and seasonal occurrence of soil arthropod mesofauna with emphasis on oribatid mites in three different tea agro-practicing gardens viz., conventional, organic and biorational approaches located in Assam. Periodical survey was carried out for a period of two years (August 2016–July 2018) and the soil arthropods were extracted, preserved, counted and identified. Oribatid mites were recognized as the most numerically dominant group of arthropod mesofauna in tea soils. A total of 40 species of oribatid mites belonging to 19 families were recorded in the present work. Population of oribatid mites exhibited a fluctuating trend being higher in post-monsoon period (October–November), slightly declined in monsoon (June –September), then in winter (December–February) and was sharply declined during summer (March–May). The Shannon diversity index (H) was found to be appreciably high in organic tea garden (3.08) followed by biorational tea garden (2.8) and conventional tea garden (2.72). Keywords Acari . Management practices . Seasonal abundance . Shannon diversity index . Tea plantation . Variation
Introduction Conservation of natural resources, including soil quality is essential to ensure sustainability and productivity in agriculture. The soil quality is normally determined by the interaction between basic (parent material and topography) and intrinsic (organic carbon, pH, bulk density and biological activities) properties.
* Somnath Roy [email protected] 1
Department of Entomology, Tocklai Tea Research Institute, Jorhat, Assam 785008, India
2
West Bengal Biodiversity Board(Department of Environment, Govt. of West Bengal), Prani Sampad Bhawan (5th floor), LB - 2, Sector III, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, West Bengal 700106, India
3
Tea Research Association, North Bengal Regional Research & Development Centre, Nagrakata, West Bengal 735225, India
4
Department of Life Sciences, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh 786004, India
In general, soil biodiversity displays a positive correlation with productivity and sustainability of the agro-ecosystem (Nielsen et al. 2015; Roy et al. 2018) and a loss in soil biodiversity and narrow down of soil community composition would adversely affect the rates of decomposition, nutrient retention and nutrient cycling process (Wagg et al. 2014). Soil arthropods are highly abundant group of soil fauna and perform many different functions in the soil ecosystem as a detritivores, d
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