Effect of habitat quality, microclimatic conditions and waste water contamination on diversity & distribution of Collembola community

Abstract

Soil biodiversity is undergoing dramatic changes due to human and climatic interference, habitat loss and fragmentation due to land use change, increasing pollution and degradation in terrestrial ecosystems. The overall effect of habitat loss is on the loss of soil biodiversity which might be due to negative response of substrate quality. Adverse microclimatic conditions may also be detrimental to species specific communities along with waste water contamination. Thus, an investigation has been carried out to ascertain the effect of habitat quality, microclimatic conditions and waste water contamination on diversity and distribution of Collembola community at Aligarh. For this, 4 samples have been taken monthly for a period of one year from two different study sites of Aligarh along with edapho-chemical properties. We observed that, density of Collembola (18.8 ind./sample) was always approximately three times more in agriculture site than in wasteland (7.6 ind./sample) site. Population of Collembola was statistically positive significant with reference to soil organic matter % (r = 0.621, P>0.05), SOC % (r = 0.622, P>0.05), Available nitrogen (r = 0.622, P>0.05) and Potash (r = 0.562, P>0.05) in Agriculture site whereas these all were statistically insignificant in Wasteland site. This observation suggests that quality of habitat has a direct effect on the diversity and population of Collembolans. The wasteland site which is a sewage filled from the nearby colonies also it is a dumping ground of waste building material under Municipal Corporation. Hence, the soil is highly contaminated as compared to the agricultural soil.