Edaphic mesofauna in different land use systems on family farms in the Colônia São Manoel, Pelotas-RS, Brazil

Abstract

The soil mesofauna is one of the factors that influence the functioning of the soil and the production
of agroecosystems. Mostly represented by acari and collembola, that represent 95%
of the microartropodes present in the soil. The objective was to analyze the impact of the different
uses of the land through indices of diversity of the edaphic mesofauna. The study was
conducted on family farms of Colônia São Manoel, Pelotas-RS, Brazil. Four areas were used:
agroecological peach orchard of 15 years (AP15) and 20 years (AP21), conventional peach
orchard 21 years (CP) and native vegetation (NV) in the Atlantic Forest biome. Sampling of the
soil mesofauna was performed using a volumetric ring from 20 cm depth and counting by the
Tullgren funnel method. High abundance was found in the NV area, wealth was similar in all
areas, the Shannon-Wiener index was higher in the CP area. The NV area had less impact on
the mesofauna of the soil followed by areas of AP15, AP21 and CP.