Community structure of springtails (subclass: Collembola) across land use types in Atlantic Canada

Intensive farming practices can drastically alter the beneficial insect community through soil disruption, chemical inputs and changing landscape heterogeneity. Soil microarthropods, such as springtails (subclass: Collembola), can provide important ecosystem services such as organic matter degradation, however we know relatively little about them in comparison to many other invertebrates present in agricultural systems. To address this, we studied springtail community composition across 130 sites in New Brunswick, Canada. Site selection was stratified across land use type and ecoregion. Collembola were extracted from the soil with Tullgren funnels and identified to family. Soil was processed to determine a number of physical characteristics, Preliminary results suggest that land wetalands supported fewer individuals and species than other land use types, likely because of high moisture levels and seasonal changes in water levels. An increase in soil bulk density was associated with a decrease in family richness, and increasing levels of carbon in the soil were also found along with increasing Collembola family richness. After adding data for other regions of Atlantic Canada, our goal is to understand in which areas we expect to see specific groups of springtails, with the end goal of using Collembola as an indicator of soil health in the Atlantic region. We also hope to develop a Collembola metabarcoding protocol to increase the resolution of our species richness.