Comparing soil microarthropod communities derived directly from soil DNA metabarcoding with those from morphological assessment in a drought-prone and irrigated pine forest

作者：Jessica Cuartero, Ivano Brunner, Marcus Schaub, Dariusz J. Gwiazdowicz, Piotr Skubała, Jiayi Qin, Paul Henning Krogh, Beat Frey · 发表于：Applied Soil Ecology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.apsoil.2025.106042 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Invertebrate Taxonomy and Ecology

Springtails (Collembola) and mites (Acari) are soil microarthropods, one of the most diverse animal groups in soils. They play a crucial role in organic matter cycling and are active throughout the food web as decomposers, bacterivores, fungivores, and carnivores. Only little is known about how these groups might respond to shifts in water availability, for example in the context of global change. Here, we investigated how soil microarthropods responded to long-term irrigation in a drought-prone Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris ) forest in southern Switzerland. After more than a decade of doubling the annual rainfall, irrigation improved not only tree vitality but also soil quality, and with shifts in bacteria and fungi reflecting changes from oligotrophic to copiotrophic conditions. We assessed soil microarthropods with two approaches: (1) directly by soil DNA metabarcoding and (2) by morphological assessment after extraction of the animals with Macfadyen funnels. Another main aim of that study was to compare the results with the two approaches. The dominant Collembola genus in both assessment approaches was Parisotoma . The dominant Sarcoptiformes genus was Oppiella whereas Geolaelaps was the dominant Mesostigmata genus in both assessment approaches . Only the metabarcoding approach detected Trombidiformes genera, and only one genus, Microtydeus , had a classification confidence >80 %. The abundance and alpha-diversity of Collembola and Acari did not change significantly as a ...