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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agroecology and Ecosystem Services
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1443215
This article is part of the Research Topic Optimizing Natural Features and BMPs in Agroecosystems Through a One-Health Approach View all 4 articles
Exploring the influence of natural features on soil mesofaunal communities in agricultural landscapes through DNA metabarcoding
Provisionally accepted- 1 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Ottawa, Canada
- 2 Department of Chemistry and Biology, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- 3 Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Soil mesofauna critically support organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling, as well as regulating pests and diseases. Agricultural activities can physically and chemically influence soil mesofauna communities, thereby impacting the ecosystem services they provide. Conserving natural features in agricultural environments is well known to support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, yet soil mesofauna communities and their functions in such features require further study. We sampled the soil mesofaunal communities (focusing on Acari (mites) and Collembola (springtails)) in agriculturally-dominated landscapes in southeastern Ontario, Canada. Semi-natural features were represented by drainage ditch banks with varying amounts of woody vegetation to different kinds of forested blocks. Specimens were extracted using Berlese funnels, and COI metabarcoding was conducted on the bulk specimen samples. A total of 585 operational taxonomic units (OTUs; a proxy for species) were identifiable based on DNA sequences, 390 of which belonged to either Acari (273) or Collembola (117); however, it was rarely possible to identify specimens to species-level. Mesofaunal richness did not differ among habitat types but community composition varied between low woody-vegetation drainage bank sites and forested blocks. Maintaining heterogeneous natural and semi-natural features appears to increase the overall diversity of mesofauna on the landscape, and even small forest patches support forest-associated soil biodiversity in this agricultural region.
Keywords: Acari, agricultural landscape, Collembola, metabarcoding, soil biodiversity
Received: 03 Jun 2024; Accepted: 12 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sahdra, Young, Kerr and Schwarzfeld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Angeli Sahdra, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Ottawa, Canada
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