Earthworms provide a number of ecosystem services and are an excellent example of “ecosystem engineers” because they modify the soil habitat substantially. In this project, I test the effects of land management on earthworm abundance and community composition by comparing forest, agricultural fields, and restored prairie landscapes. This project was conducted at the Ecological Research Center (ERC) in Oxford, Ohio in three different topographic locations. In these locations, we characterized earthworm communities in forest, agricultural, and restored prairie sites by sampling from 8 subplots along 50 meter transects per site. Earthworms were collected in each subplot using mustard extractions and abundance, biomass, and relative abundance of each earthworm species were quantified. Earthworm community composition was similar among the agricultural, prairie, and forest sites, but earthworm abundance varied substantially with larger populations in forest than agricultural sites. This allows us to see that while earthworm species composition is fairly equal, there are clear differences in how many earthworms a frequently disturbed environment can support versus an infrequently disturbed environment. Earthworms are iconic organisms and it is therefore important to understand how land management limits their populations. This will be vital information for future soil invertebrate conservation practices as well as mitigating the spread of invasive species such as the Asian Jumping Worm (Amynthas spp.).
Author: Rachel Vees, Botany and Sustainability
Advisor: Melany Fisk, Biology
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