Nematode Communities in Soils of the Same Volcanic Origin across a Gradient of Naturalization: From Intensive Agriculture to Forest

Silvia Landi, Giada d’Errico () and Barbara Manachini
Additional contact information
Silvia Landi: Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA-DC), 50125 Florence, Italy
Giada d’Errico: Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA-DC), 50125 Florence, Italy
Barbara Manachini: Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences (SAAF), University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 15, 1-13

Abstract: Nematodes play a key role in ecological environments. Biotic indices based on soil nematode community are effectively used for assessing soil health status. This work represents the opportunity to investigate three different management practices continuously maintained for 40 or more decades on soils with the same geological origin. This unique feature allows us to reduce variables and link biotic with abiotic factors. Therefore, the nematode communities of three neighboring volcanic soils under different managements were examined. The maximum values in soil biodiversity were found in the forest environment in which all the trophic groups were detected and well balanced. Instead, in permanent grassing and carnation crop greenhouse (CG), biodiversity indices progressively decreased with the intensification of agricultural practices. Furthermore, CG showed a stronger dominance of a specific plant-parasitic nematode identified as Heterodera daverti . Nematode indicators demonstrated that changes in the nematode community gradually varied from anthropic to natural environments whereas soil properties were feebly correlated to nematode community indicators. In conclusion, we demonstrated that biodiversity and ecological indices applied to the soil nematode community are effective at detecting alterations due to anthropogenic impact. Nematodes seem to be susceptible to perceiving the soil dynamics.

Keywords: nematode communities; biodiversity; biotic indices; carnation; permanent grassing; forest; anthropogenic impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/15/6307/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/15/6307/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:15:p:6307-:d:1441294

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().