Abstract
Soil macrofauna and soil environments were investigated in twelve pine forests at Tsukuba Science city in Ibaraki prefecture. A total of 96 species of soil macro-animals were collected. Among them, 26 to 43 species were found in unweeded pine forests, 18 to 24 in weeded pine forests. The species found in unweeded pine forests consisted of 680-1205 individuals per square meter; those in small weeded pine forests, 195-880 individuals per sq. m; in weeded pine forests, 256-549 individuals per sq. m. The SHANNON-WIENER (H') equation was calculated to measure the diversity of soil macrofauna. The H' value found for weeded pine forests was less than for the small weeded pine forests and unweeded pine forests. To analyze the similarity of fauna in the twelve pine forests, a dendrogram was constructed from JACCARD's similarity index based on the species composition for each pine forest. As a result, those soil macrofauna in the pine forests were separated in two two clusters: nearly one cluster indicated the groups of soil macrofauna in unweeded and small weeded pine forests; the other cluster indicated the soil macrofauna in weeded pine forests. The weeded pine forests had the thinnest A_<00>, A_0, and A_1 layers among the twelve pine forests studied. It is suggested that the soil macrofauna are influenced by this soil environmental factor.
