Soil fauna community in the black soil of Northeast China under different tillage systems

Soil fauna is an important component in soil ecosystems. This study tested whether conservation tillage or conventional tillage of a black soil (Udic Mollisol) field in Northeast China could affect its soil fauna communities. Two different conservation tillage systems, no-tillage (NT) and reduced tillage (RT), as well as a conventional rotary tillage system (CT), were chosen for this study. There were 4562 individuals isolated from this study, which included two orders and 35 families. Acariformes was the most abundant family and represented 91.56% of the total faunal abundance. The abundance and the number of faunal families were higher in conservation tillage systems than in the CT. The RT system had the highest individual number of soil fauna among three tillage methods. The faunal accumulation in the soil surface also was significantly higher in the two conservation tillage systems than in the CT. Our results indicate that the conservation tillage systems could protect the soil fauna in the soil ecosystem better than the CT.