Functional composition of soil macrofauna in four land uses of Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces, Cuba

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the functional composition of soil macrofauna in different land use
types including secondary forest, pastures, fields with varied crop cultivation destined to potato production
and sugarcane fields. The land use systems were located in the Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces. In these
systems the edaphic macrofauna was collected in October, at the end of the rainy season of 2009, using the
TSBF methodology. The data processing included the determination of the density and biomass of the
macrofauna functional groups in each land use, and the statistical analysis implicated the Kruskal-Wallis
nonparametric test. The soil engineers and/or detritivores communities were observed to be better represented
in density in the majority of land uses, and in biomass, the detritivore and/or herbivore functional groups. The
proportion between the functional groups of soil macrofauna in the land uses depended on land use intensity,
the disturbance level of the edaphic environment and the availability of resources.