Environmental Effects on Taxonomic Turnover in Soil Fauna across Multiple Forest Ecosystems in East Asia

The large-scale spatial variation in and causes of biotic turnover of soil fauna remain poorly understood. Analyses were conducted based on published data from 14 independent sampling sites across five forest ecosystems in East Asia. Jaccard and Sorensen's indices were used to measure turnover rates in soil fauna orders. A redundancy analysis was used to investigate multiple environmental controls of the composition of soil fauna communities. The results showed that both Jaccard's and Sorensen's index increased significantly with increasing latitude difference. The environment explained 54.1%, 50.6%, 57.3% and 50.9% of the total variance, and spatial factors explained 13.8%, 15.9%, 21.0% and 12.6% of the total variance in the orders' composition regarding overall, phytophagous, predatory and saprophagous fauna, respectively. In addition, climate factors in environmental processes were observed to have a stronger effect than soil factors on the orders' turnover rates. Our results support the hypothesis that the effect of environment factors on soil animal taxa turnover is more important than the effect of spatial factors. Climatic factors explained more variation in the turnover of phytophagic fauna, but soil and environment factors equally explained the variation in the turnover of predatory fauna. This study provides evidence to support both environmental filtering and dispersal limitation hypotheses at the regional and population scales.

Automated summary

This study investigates the spatial variation and causes of biotic turnover of soil fauna in five forest ecosystems in East Asia. The results suggest that environmental factors have a stronger effect on soil animal taxa turnover compared to spatial factors. Climate factors play a larger role in the turnover of phytophagic fauna, while soil and environment factors equally contribute to the turnover of predatory fauna.