Last Update: 6 December 2017 Part II

ET 2
Role of moisture in regulation of microarthropods
Soil fauna is not sufficient in sandy or desert soil. The nature of the soil is vary place to place, soil
fauna also vary form place to place. A soil that has organic matter moist moderate or most of the edaphic is
likely to have more types and more number of soil faunas. But there is exception.
There are some creatures, which preferred to live in acidic soil as for example earthworms prefer
more acidic condition. But most of the fauna are prefer to live in moist and moderate type soil.
But the Question is that, How the population of soil fauna is regulated? And why we specially
selected microarthropods to study?
This is due to :
1) Microarthropods is a common group of the soil organism, which can be easily encountered and
studied.
2) Besides, most of the investigations in India and abort have been done.
Regulation of soil microarthropods :- The abundance of soil arthropods varies from place to place and
from time to time i.e. Theyre spatial variation of the abundance as well as the temporal abundance.
Environmental condition vary from time to time and place to place correspondingly effect on
abundance if soil fauna.
Spatial variation :- Survey of ecology showed that microarthropods are more abundant in undisturbed,
stable, complex and matured ecosystem as for example a forest ecosystem. These are also common in
grassland because there is a little disturbance, of course a little beats of grazing. But the microarthropods are
less common in disturbed, unstable, simple and pioneer ecosystem.
There are several other ecosystem which may be disturbed and unstable e.g. agro-ecosystem because
continues human \ anthropogenic influencing like plaughing, application of fertilizer and pesticides,
harvesting, eradication of weds etc. So in this ecosystem the number of microarthropods are much less.
In plantation (artificial forest) also under continuous human influences or an ecosystem which is
polluted for that there member of population of microarthropods also decreased.
Temporal variation :- If we study the temporal variation, we see that the temporal variation showed some
short of irregular oscillation of the population abundance and density throughout the year. The most
microarthropods they exhibit such irregular oscillation.

Because we are studding on the microarthropods including heterogeneity of the species variety, these
different species differ in their environmental requirement and their life cycle is also different.
The environmental factors always not favourable for the all other species and life cycle, is also varies
greatly in different species, like some species has one month life cycle & some other species has taken to
complete life cycle in a year. So, we get a fluctuation of fauna.
But some sort of trends can be identified, for example, in temperate countries microarthropods are
more in number in soil during autumn because in this time the conditions are favourable and the
microarthropods population exhibit a prominent peak, but in tropical countries condition are quite different.
Altogether, here, rainfall and moisture content of soil play very important\critical role in determining the
abundance of micro arthropods, In general, in tropical countries like India, we can divide two broad
environmental conditions (seasons)
1) Dry seasons
2) Wet seasons
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 In dry seasons, in general microarthropods exhibits low abundance and in wet seasons they become
more in abundance.
But most of the investigator in India has opined that there is a single peak of micro arthropods
abundance during rainy seasons (during post monsoon) or during autumn. Because in the rainy seasons soil
is rich in organic carbon, rich in vegetation, and due to optimum temperature (Bhattacharya &
Roychoudhury,1979) there is 2nd smaller peak during pre monsoon period.
In tropical India, peak is usually observed in the pre monsoon and post monsoon period. Mukharjee,
Sing (1977), Prabhoo (1976), Chaudhury and Panday (1979), Reddy (1987), Sinha et al. (1988).
Some authors reported that there are two peaks during pre monsoon and post monsoon, Bhattacharya
and Roychoudhury (1979); Sanyal (1981, 1982), Dammerman (1937) working on Malayan archipelago.
Similar observations have been made in Tropical Africa Loots & Ryke (1966). Bhattacharya and
Chakraborty (1984) in Tripura showed that in pre monsoon or summer peak for microarthropods. Corpus
(1980) also observed more less similar patterns of fluctuations of oribatid mites in Philippines.
Correlation between soil factor and soil fauna :- Many authors attempted to correlate different soil factors
with the abundance of microarthropods in general or with the major groups like cryptostigmata and
collembola. Many of these have obtained a simple correlation coefficient with moisture content of soil and
micro arthropods but most of these findings are in conflict i.e. they dont agree with the finding of others
Singh (1978), Pillai (1978), Chaudhary et al, (1978). Bhattachariya and Roychaudhury (1979) Reddy (1984)
etc.
The reason of the above conflict is that, in nature it is very difficult to isolate the defect of the one
factor to the other factor. As all the environmental factors are working together in jointly and these influence
that abundance of soil micro arthropods rather than a single factor as suggested by Bhattacharya and
Roychoudhury in 1979. Some of the latest information suggested by Bhattacharya and Roychoudhury
(1994) thus here failed to get any +ve correlation between a factors and different groups of micro arthropods
except for collembola (+ve) in Rubber plantation.
Singh (1978), Pillai (1978), Chaudhury et al, (1978). Bhattachariya and Roychaudhury (1979) Reddy
(1984) have observed a +ve correlation between moisture content of soil and collembola. Bhattacharya and
Roychoudhury (1979) Corpus Laros (1980), Bhattacharya and Bhattacharya (1987) found a +ve correlation
between soil moisture and soil microarthropods
A ve correlation between pH and Astigmata as well as with to the acari in polluted soil has been
reported by Bhattacharya and Bhattacharya (1987) while the Bhattacharya and Roychoudhury
(1979)observed a +ve correlation between the microarthropods and rainfall of the previous month.
Bhattacharya and Bhattacharya (1987) found a ve correlation between the soil microarthropods and
rainfall of the some month.
It is the cumulative effect of the environmental factor rather than an individual factor is responsible
for the population consideration of micro-arthropods. In temperature country moisten is not important with
increase of organic carbon, soil microarthropods in creased. But in tropical country moisture is very
important (moisture means temperature, rainfall, water holding capacity of soil) water holding capacity of
soil depends upon porosity and organic carbon of soil.

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