Belowground success: Collembola as indicators of restoration progress following active and passive restoration

Visagie, Marizanne

Belowground success: Collembola as indicators of restoration progress following active and passive restoration

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

Due to the unprecedented changes and fragmentation of ecosystems caused by human land uses and exploitation, ecological restoration is an increasingly essential topic in the field of conservation. In South Africa, a predominantly semi-arid country, invasive tree species negatively impact the limited water resources by reducing runoff and disrupting water related ecosystem services. Private organizations, as well as the Western Cape government, have been clearing riparian areas of alien invasive trees along rivers in the Western Cape since 1995. Areas investigated in this study included three riparian sites along the Berg River in the Western Cape, habitats that are also vulnerable to environmental changes. The study focussed on monitoring restoration efforts by the Berg and Breede River Rehabilitation Programme, which involved clearing of alien invasive trees along the Berg River, followed by either active restoration (follow-up clearing and monitoring) or passive restoration (no treatment after alien plant removal). Despite soils being so vital in the field of restoration, most studies to date have investigated the aboveground impacts of restoration, with few studies on invertebrate taxa, especially belowground soil fauna. This study assessed Collembola (springtail) communities between active and passive restoration sites in comparison to invaded, non-restored sites as reference sites. Sampling was conducted during winter (2020) and winter and spring (2021) to consider the seasonal effects. From a total of 250 samples, 77,880 individual specimens and 34 morphospecies were collected and identified. Results showed that Collembola assemblages differed significantly among the different restoration treatments, especially between actively restored and invaded sites. Results from the study further suggested that active restoration may be the most effective method for bringing these communities closer to their natural state, since active restoration was found to be the most significantly different from invaded sites in terms of Collembola community composition (Kruskal-Wallis, p< 0.005) during spring 2020 and spring 2021 (p

Keywords

belowground ecosystems

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