Ecological resilience of soil oribatid mite communities after the fire disturbance

Ecological resilience of soil oribatid mite communities after the fire disturbance

This study investigated the impact of the fire disturbance and the pattern of recovery of soil dwelling oribatid mite communities with respect to the resilience from the fire disturbance. Oribatid mites are important decomposer animals of plant debris in soil with the feeding habits of saprophagy and mycophagy. Massive wild fire reduced soil oribatid mite abundance and diversity. The impact varied relative to the intensity of the disturbance. The proportion of the species common to the non-disturbed natural site increased as the time after the disturbance elapsed, which implying some degree of naturalness occurring in reorganization phase of the oribatid mite community. From the sites with different degree of fire impact, we found higher diversity in intermediately disturbed sites than in severely disturbed or non-disturbed site, supporting the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Also this study showed that with differential degree of disturbance plots, resilience pattern after the disturbance can be explored even with shorter period research relative to the ecological succession of community.