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Abstract
It is well understood that complex abiotic and biotic factors influence soil dynamics. To better understand these interactions, the ability to discuss focal taxa at a species level could be incredibly informative, albeit difficult to accomplish due to limited knowledge of existing taxa diversity. The utilization of microhabitats by different species may be important in explaining community compositions among forest types. Collembolans represent a unique focus group to help understand soil dynamics because they respond strongly to physico-chemical and/or biological changes that occur within environments even over a small geographic range. This study was conducted along an altitudinal gradient in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico. We sampled in tabonuco, (Dacryodes excelsa, 300-520 m a.s.l.) palo colorado (Cyrilla racemiflora, 750-820 m a.s.l.), and elfin (Tabebuia rigida, 950-1050 m a.s.l.) forest types. Sampling occurred in nine plots every four months from August 2014 to August 2015, with three plots in each forest type. In each plot, we selected five trees of the dominant species and sampled soil, leaf litter and epiphytes from the adjacent area of each tree. Berlese funnels were used to extract all arthropods and collembolans were identified to species. In total, 8335 collembolans were collected and found to represent 51 species, 2 subspecies and 6 forms that belong to 15 families. Fourteen new species and 2 subspecies were described, and 22 species were reported for the Island. The QRL analyses showed the influence of environmental conditions over the morphological traits in Collembola species, and allowed the separation in to functional group based in mobility characters. According to a principal component analysis (PCA) there was a clear separation of Collembola communities according to the elevation among the three forests type. Community composition varied among forests, in species richness and abundances. Palo colorado forest had the highest number of species 52, followed by the efin with 42 and Tabonuco with 37. These results show the importance of several microhabitats for collembolans, especially epiphytes in the elfin forest, which were found to contain high abundance. For soil samples we found two endemic species, while in epiphytes and leaf litter had 6 and 9 exclusive species respectively. This study highlights the dearth of taxonomic information for collembolans in tropical forests and the importance of their distribution along microhabitats as well as their participation in the decomposition process.
Citation
Ospina-Sánchez, Claudia M. 2019. Role of Microhabitats and environment variation on Collembola (Hexapoda: Entognatha) populations in the Luquillo Experimental Forest: a montane environment. Doctoral dissertation. Río Piedras, P.R., University of Puerto Rico, Natural Sciences Faculty, Biology Department. 195 pp.
