Fine-scale recovery of mite communities following local extinctions on grasslands.

Abstract

Agricultural management can substantially reduce soil biodiversity, potentially impairing key ecosystem processes. Understanding the capacity of soil biota to recover after severe disturbance is therefore essential for evaluating soil resilience. Soil-dwelling mite communities are known to respond sensitively to environmental change. We investigated the recovery of soil mite communities in a newly planted grassland using half-open field mesocosms. Grass mixtures were cultivated over three consecutive eight-month periods in chernozem and sandy soils. Within each system, mite assemblages in minimally disturbed soil were compared with those in experimentally defaunated soil, while a range of environmental variables was monitored. This design enabled the assessment of short-term local recovery potential. Mesostigmata (mean ± standard deviation of defaunation effect size, ES= + 0.07 ± 0.91) and Heterostigmata (Pygmephoroidea, ES= + 0.20 ± 0.61; Tarsonemidae, ES = -0.05 ± 0.36) recovered rapidly, likely due to efficient dispersal and high population growth rates. Their abundance was generally positively associated with vegetation biomass, suggesting improved microhabitat conditions and resource availability. In contrast, oribatid mites showed consistently slow and often incomplete recovery (ES = - 1.08 ± 0.66), highlighting the constraints imposed by limited dispersal ability and slow life cycles. Their recovery was further modulated by edaphic conditions, with more favourable outcomes in chernozem than in sandy soil. Overall, these results show that soil mite recovery is shaped by the interaction between taxon-specific life-history traits and environmental conditions. The findings further demonstrate that mite communities respond differently to disturbance, highlighting the need to account for functional differences among taxa when assessing recovery.