Taxonomic and trophic groups diversity of soil invertebrates positively respond to restoration of riparian forests

Abstract

A successful restoration of riparian forests can recover the diversity of several groups of soil invertebrates. However, few studies have considered the recovery of the entire community of soil macrofauna and the relative effect in taxonomical and functional diversity. We evaluated how taxonomical diversity, in terms of abundance and richness, relates to trophic diversity in four patches of riparian forests that had been artificially recovered, and compared them to the reference site in Volta Grande Reservoir, Brazil. No relationship was found between taxonomic diversity and trophic diversity, suggesting functional redundancy among taxonomic groups. Nevertheless, we observed that the taxonomic group with more species presented higher trophic diversity than the rest, indicating low functional redundancy within this group. The abundance and the taxonomic and functional richness of the four restored sites was similar to the reference site. The forest recovery was efficient in recovering invertebrate soil community since the taxonomic and trophic composition recorded in our study were similar to the composition of natural areas. We emphasize the importance of studying edaphic fauna as a community in order to comprehend how it reacts to forest restoration.