Soil oribatid mite community structure and its relationship with environmental factors in different agricultural land-use types in Shibing Karst

Abstract The karst world natural heritage site is characterized by fragility due to severe rocky desertification. Buffer zone functions as the ecological barrier of the core area of the heritage site, and can play an ecological filtering role in the core area. Therefore, buffer zones are of great ecological significance. In order to reveal the community characteristics of soil oribatid mites in different agricultural land-use in the buffer zone of Shibing Karst World Natural Heritage and their relationship with environmental factors, soil oribatid mites in the buffer zone of corn field (CF), golden pear garden (GP) and tobacco field (TF) were collected in September 2021. A total of 1220 oribatid mites belonging to 79 genera and 41 families were found in the study. Our key results include (1) The family number, genus number, individual number, and individual density of GP are higher (2) Scheloribates is the dominant group, 22 genera such as Oppiella, Tectocepheus, and Xylobates are common groups, and 56 genera such as Neoribates and Protoribates are rare groups. (3) The Diversity index of GP is higher than that of other cultivated land types. Community similarity analysis shows that the similarity between GP and CF is high, but all habitats are at a medium level of dissimilarity. (4) Analysis of the ecological group of oribatid mites shows that Poronota is more abundant than Macropylina and Gymnonota. (5) The Diversity index, richness index, family and genus level of oribatid mites were significantly positively correlated with soil humidity (SH) and the number of genera, individuals and individual density were significantly positively correlated with total phosphorus (TP). Redundancy analysis indicates that total phosphorus (TP), total potassium (TK), and soil organic matter (SOM) are the main environmental factors affecting the distribution of soil oribatid mites communities. Based on the above research results, it can be seen that there are differences in the community structure of soil oribatid mites in different agricultural land-use in the study area. The use of dominant genera of mites can preliminarily indicate the soil ecological environment of different agricultural land-use. The research results provide basic data for the biodiversity protection of soil animals in different agricultural land-use in the buffer zone of Shibing Karst World Natural Heritage.