A landscape in New Zealand showing different types of land use. Image credit: Ian Dickie (CC BY 4.0)
Living within the Earth’s soil are millions of insects, worms and other invertebrates, which help keep the ground healthy and fertile. There is a growing concern that changing land-use habits, such as agriculture and urban development, are causing these populations of invertebrates to decline. However, to what extent different types of land use negatively impact soil invertebrates is not clear.
Healthy habitats often have a greater variety of species. This biodiversity can be measured in a number of ways, ranging from counting the number of species, to more complex approaches that calculate a species’ role in an ecosystem or how close it is to extinction. Finding a way to sensitively measure the biodiversity of soil invertebrates could further researcher’s understanding of how different types of land use are affecting these communities.
A new method known as DNA metabarcoding has made it easier to distinguish between different species and calculate the biodiversity of entire populations. Now, Dopheide et al. have used this technique to study invertebrate communities from 75 sites across New Zealand which have been impacted by different land-use habits. This revealed that the most reliable and consistent way to uncover how land use affects soil invertebrates was to measure the rarity of species (i.e. the number of unique species present at each site).
Dopheide et al. found that agriculture negatively affected soil invertebrates and that most types of invertebrates responded in a similar way. Horticulture – such as orchards and vineyards – had the most severe impact, with the lowest variety of species compared to grassland or forest.
Other measurements of biodiversity, such as the number of different species, may underestimate the negative impact agriculture is having on invertebrate communities. The findings of Dopheide et al. highlight why developing strategies to preserve and restore these communities is so important. However, more work is needed to understand what specifically is causing biodiversity to decline and how this effect can be reversed.
