| Checklist of the Collembola: Responses of Collembola Communities to Lead Shot Depositions in a Heathland Environment |
Luc De Bruyn1,2, Frans Janssens2, Frederik Hendrickx3 & Jean-Pierre Maelfait1,3
1 Inst. Nature Conservation, Kliniekstr. 25, 1070 Brussel, Belgium
2 Dept. Biology, Univ. of Antwerpen, Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerpen, Belgium
3 Lab. Ecology, Univ. of Gent, K.L. Ledeganckstr. 35, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Correspondence: luc.de.bruyn@instnat.be
Abstract
It has been stated by several authors that the abundance, species diversity and life history characteristics of Collembola can provide information on environmental conditions. Because different collembolan species possess different sensitivities to metal pollution, an analysis of their community composition and organisation might provide an accurate tool to estimate soil pollution. In view of a project that aims to construct a multi-species test system for contaminated soils, a multitude of invertebrate taxa were collected in the heathland "Groot Schietveld" near Antwerp, Belgium. In this heathland area a clay pigeon shooting stand is situated. As a consequence, the soil in the target zone is heavily contaminated by lead shot depositions. We selected two contaminated sites in the target zone and two uncontaminated sites with comparable soil and vegetation structure as a control. Collembola were sampled with a core sampler (i=5cm; depth=10cm) and extracted with a modified McFayden apparatus. Soil lead content and additional soil parameters (humidity, carbon content, pH, ...) were related to differences in community structure and functionality.
Index terms: Collembola, ecological indicator, heavy metal, pollution.