Beta-diversity partitioning approach in soil zoology: A case of Collembola in pine forests

The paper analyzes the structure of diversity in Collembola an abundant group of small soil-dwelling arthropods. Collembola were studied in two regions of East European forest subzones: mid-boreal and boreonemoral. The study was carried out in ecological series of pine forests arranged along the moisture gradient: moist sphagnum, mesic green moss, and dry lichen types. The study was repeated in three locations of two subzones in different seasons and years. A fractal-based nested design was chosen for sampling. The hierarchical approach enabled taking account of the contributions made to the total collembolan gamma-diversity by lower scale units: regions representing different forest subzones, locations within a region, sites within a location, as well as within-site patchiness. Each of these units was considered as an individual level of beta-diversity, and its contribution to the region's total collembolan diversity was calculated by additive partitioning. It was demonstrated that a square meter of the forest floor contained around a third of Collembola species known to inhabit East European pine forests. The structure of springtails diversity corresponds to the beta-type. The largest proportion to the total gamma-diversity was made by subzone-specific collembolan species compositions. The contributions of the location and site scales within the same subzone were equivalent. Analysis of time series showed that around a quarter of the species composition in a habitat is replaced across season and year series, in spite of the substantial sampling effort. The dependence of estimates of alpha- and beta-components of diversity on the number of partitioning levels is discussed.