Does allochthonous leaf litter structure terrestrial cave invertebrate assemblages?
2021
Campbell, Joshua W. | Tsalickis, Alexandra | Cuminale, Anthony | Abbate, Anthony
Allochthonous materials are the main sources of nutrients for most cave invertebrate communities. However, scant research exists about the differences in quality of various cave nutrient sources. We investigated whether different types of leaf litter would attract different terrestrial invertebrates within cave ecosystems. We placed six leaf types: (1) Maple (Acer saccharum) (2) Dogwood (Cornus florida) (3) Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) (4) Pine (Pinus taeda) (5) Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor) (6) Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata) in three caves in north Alabama. Leaf sets were placed within the twilight and dark zones within each cave and gathered at 30, 60, and 100-day intervals. Leaves were dried, weighed, and C/N analyses of leaves were determined. Pine had significantly higher C/N ratios whereas dogwood and red oak had the lowest. However, abundances of the most commonly collected invertebrates (e.g. Collembola and Acari) were not affected by the leaf type despite some leaves (e.g. pine) being a lower quality food source. Additionally, no differences in overall invertebrate abundance or taxa richness were found neither among the leaf types nor between the twilight and dark zones. Our data suggests that terrestrial invertebrate abundance is not solely driven by food quality and could be driven by multiple factors.
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