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Lumbricus terrestris abundance is not enhanced after three years of compost amendments on a reduced tillage wheat cultivation conversion
Applied Soil Ecology 98 (2016) 282–284
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Soil Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apsoil
Short communication
Lumbricus terrestris abundance is not enhanced after three years of compost amendments on a reduced tillage wheat cultivation conversion Jacqueline L. Stroud* , Daisy Irons, Chris W. Watts, Andrew P. Whitmore Sustainable Soils and Grassland Systems Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ, United Kingdom
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 24 July 2015 Received in revised form 9 October 2015 Accepted 11 October 2015 Available online 27 October 2015
This study compared the abundance of Lumbricus terrestris middens under wheat cultivations treated with 3.5 t C ha 1 compost (n = 15) or farmyard manure (n = 15) amendments. The abundance of L. terrestris middens was significantly (p < 0.01) greater on the farmyard manure amended plots than the compost or control plots, with a ca. 38% higher midden abundance. These data suggest that compost is a not a good alternative to farmyard manure to improve L. terrestris populations when converting from conventional (plough) to reduced tillage (stubble cultivated) regimes. ã 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Midden Minimum tillage Lumbricus terrestris Farmyard manure
1. Introduction Anecic or deep burrowing earthworms are important to low intensity tillage farming (Edwards and Bohlen, 1996). Lumbricus terrestris is an abundant anecic earthworm in the UK and it can be considered as a keystone species for agriculture due to its burrowing activities that improve soil structure and water permeability (Nuutinen and Butt, 2003); surface activities that result in carbon and nitrogen hotspots (Wilcox et al., 2002); and middens which are biological hotspots in comparison to surrounding soil (Butt and Lowe, 2007). However, intensive cultivation practices (ploughing) significantly reduces their abundance (Edwards and Lofty, 1982), and long term ploughing can lead to local extinctions (Kladivko et al., 1997). Thus, as farming practices are changing from ploughing to reduced tillage regimes, strategies to support the abundance of their populations are needed. Earthworm abundances in arable cultivations can be enhanced by farmyard manure additions (Whalen et al., 1998) and L. terrestris colonisation is linked to animal manures (Karberg and Lilleskov, 2009). However, there are large areas of arable farmland in the UK where farmyard manure is not readily available in comparison to other organic matters such as compost. It has been shown that L. terrestris has a broad feeding range (Curry and Schmidt, 2007), and
* Corresponding author. Fax: +44 1582 760981. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.L. Stroud). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2015.10.007 0929-1393/ ã 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
re-distributes organic matter to form middens, thus compost may be a suitable alternative to enhancing L. terrestris abundance. The aim of this research was to test whether L. terrestris populations could be enhanced by organic amendments in a conversion from a conventional (ploughed) tillage regime to a minimum tillage regime. 2. Material and methods The trial was carried out at the Rothamsted experimental farm in Hertfordshire, UK. The soil was characterised as a flinty clay loam of the Batcombe soil series, with a pH 7 and organic matter content of 2.6%. It is managed using a conventional regime (fertiliser, pesticides) and for the past 3 years has been under minimum tillage. For tillage, a Lemken Karat stubble cultivator consisting of tines, discs and a crumbler roll was used at a depth of ca. 10 cm. The trial is managed under an arable rotation series, and at the time of sampling was under winter wheat. The experiment was a complete randomised block design with 9 m 4 m experimental plot units and 45 plots were surveyed. The survey included five replicate plots per condition (farm yard manure, chopped first with a muck spreader, and green waste compost both applied by hand at 3.5 t C ha 1 in September over the past three years) and a control, where no organic amendment was supplied per block (n = 3). The abundance of L. terrestris was estimated by counting their middens. A 1 m2 square quadrat was used to transect 6 m2 per plot in April 2015 in order to survey 17% of each plot area (30 m2 per
J.L. Stroud et al. / Applied Soil Ecology 98 (2016) 282–284
283
3.5
3.0
Middens per m
2
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0 Control 2
Fig. 1. Lumbricus terrestris middens per m under 3.5 t C ha (n = 45) is presented as the SED.
1
Compost
Farmyard manure
farmyard manure, compost or control (0 t C ha
treatment, and 270 m2 studied for midden abundance in total) This time point prior to stem elongation was chosen to avoid crop damage from the survey, and a pre-study determined the optimal quadrat size and plot area to test the differences between the treatments at p < 0.05 significance. One in every 20 plots was resurveyed for middens for quality control, ensuring that midden counts were 100 10% accurate. Disturbance of middens was minimized as the crop field trial experiment is ongoing, but the presence of L. terrestris was confirmed on selected middens by directly applying mustard (10 g mustard powder per 750 ml) solution via a 20 ml syringe to the burrow opening. Within 3 min, an earthworm was recovered, rinsed and species identified as L. terrestris using standard earthworm keys before being returned to the soil. Additionally, midden counts were validated using the method described by Singh et al., (2015) on 10 spots (0.25 cm2 areas) representing midden density across the field. The midden abundance data (the mean of 6 1 m2 counts per plot, 15 plots per treatment) was tested for normality, required log transformation, then the analysis of variance (ANOVA) on this complete randomized block design was carried out to assess the statistical significance of midden abundance on the field plots in relation to organic amendments. Following Singh et al. (2015), spearmans correlation was used to quantify the relationship between midden density and L. terrestris recovery (Genstat 2012, 14th addition, VSN International Ltd., UK). 3. Results and discussion Midden counts were a valid estimation of L. terrestris sub-adult and adults with a spearman correlation of rs = 0.79, p = 0.016. The average mass was 5.68 1.3 g. This is in agreement with previous surveys of midden counts (Singh et al., 2015). Farmyard manure significantly (p < 0.01) enhanced midden abundance by 38% in comparison to both the control and compost amendment, indicating that it is the better amendment for improving L. terrestris abundance (Fig. 1). Manure is often linked to their abundance, where animal faeces influence L. terrestris invasions in woodlands (Karberg and Lilleskov, 2009) and in laboratory feeding studies, this species shows a preference for
1
SED
) treatments. The standard errors of the differences of the means
dung (Doube et al., 1997). Considering both organic amendments were supplied at the same carbon rate, these data suggest that the L. terrestris preferred farmyard manure amendments indicating itis a better food resource than compost. As L. terrestris are slow colonisers, recorded at invading a field at 4.6 m per year (Nuutinen et al., 2011) choosing an appropriate amendment that rapidly enhances their abundance in agroecosystems is important. The typical populations on this min till field trial were an average 2.5 middens per m2 (n = 45) are generally below values reported in the literature. Studies on different cropping systems in the US gave midden counts between 18 and 28 per m2 for no till, and 1–3 middens per m2 for conventional tillage (Simonsen et al., 2010). Little is known as to how fields can be re-populated and whether it is resource efficient to do so on every soil type. A total of 7 middens per m2 was the highest number detected, coupled to the significant response of abundance to organic matter supplementation, suggests that this field trial could support a 3-fold higher population of this species under farmyard manure amendments. These findings are in agreement with Leroy et al. (2008), who showed that general earthworm populations are enhanced by FYM amendments in comparison to compost. In conclusion, compost seems to be a less suitable alternative to farmyard manure to enhance L. terrestris abundances during the first years of the transition to reduced tillage. Acknowledgements This work was supported by grants from DEFRA (SP1312), HGCA (RD-2012-3787) and SARIC (NE/M016714/1). We thank Richard Hull from Rothamsted Research for providing the quadrats and Rodger White for statistical analysis. References Butt, K.R., Lowe, C.N., 2007. Presence of earthworm species within and beneath Lumbricus terrestris (L.) middens. Eur. J. Soil Biol. 43, S57–S60. Curry, J.P., Schmidt, O., 2007. The feeding ecology of earthworms—a review. Pedobiologia 50, 463–477. Doube, B.M., Schmidt, O., Killham, K., Correll, R., 1997. Influence of mineral soil on the palatability of organic matter for lumbricid earthworms: a simple food preference study. Soil. Biol. Biochem. 29, 569–575.
284
J.L. Stroud et al. / Applied Soil Ecology 98 (2016) 282–284
Edwards, C.A., Bohlen, P.J., 1996. Biology and Ecology of Earthworms. Chapman and Hall Ltd.; Chapman and Hall, Inc., 2-6 Boundary Row, London SE1 8HN, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York, USA. Edwards, C.A., Lofty, J.R., 1982. The effect of direct drilling and minimal cultivation on earthworm populations. J. Appl. Ecol. 19, 723–734. Karberg, N., Lilleskov, E., 2009. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fecal pellet decomposition is accelerated by the invasive earthworm Lumbricus terrestris. Biol. Invasions 11, 761–767. Kladivko, E.J., Akhouri, N.M., Weesies, G., 1997. Earthworm populations and species distributions under no-till and conventional tillage in Indiana and Illinois. Soil. Biol. Biochem. 29, 613–615. Leroy, B.L.M., Schmidt, O., Van den Bossche, A., Reheul, D., Moens, M., 2008. Earthworm population dynamics as influenced by the quality of exogenous organic matter. Pedobiologia 52, 139–150. Nuutinen, V., Butt, K.R., 2003. Interaction of Lumbricus terrestris L. burrows with field subdrains: the 7th international symposium on earthworm ecology. Pedobiologia 47, 578–581.
Nuutinen, V., Butt, K.R., Jauhiainen, L., 2011. Field margins and management affect settlement and spread of an introduced dew-worm (Lumbricus terrestris L.) population. Pedobiologia 54, S167–S172. Simonsen, J., Posner, J., Rosemeyer, M., Baldock, J., 2010. Endogeic and anecic earthworm abundance in six Midwestern cropping systems. Appl. Soil Ecol. 44, 147–155. Singh, P., Heikkinen, J., Ketoja, E., Nuutinen, V., Palojärvi, A., Sheehy, J., Esala, M., Mitra, S., Alakukku, L., Regina, K., 2015. Tillage and crop residue management methods had minor effects on the stock and stabilization of topsoil carbon in a 30-year field experiment. Sci. Total Environ. 518–519, 337–344. Whalen, J.K., Parmelee, R.W., Edwards, C.A., 1998. Population dynamics of earthworm communities in corn agroecosystems receiving organic or inorganic fertilizer amendments. Biol. Fertil. Soils 27, 400–407. Wilcox, C., Domínguez, J., Parmelee, R., McCartney, D., 2002. Soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in Lumbricus terrestris L. middens in four arable, a pasture, and a forest ecosystems. Biol. Fertil. Soils 36, 26–34.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Soil Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apsoil
Short communication
Lumbricus terrestris abundance is not enhanced after three years of compost amendments on a reduced tillage wheat cultivation conversion Jacqueline L. Stroud* , Daisy Irons, Chris W. Watts, Andrew P. Whitmore Sustainable Soils and Grassland Systems Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ, United Kingdom
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 24 July 2015 Received in revised form 9 October 2015 Accepted 11 October 2015 Available online 27 October 2015
This study compared the abundance of Lumbricus terrestris middens under wheat cultivations treated with 3.5 t C ha 1 compost (n = 15) or farmyard manure (n = 15) amendments. The abundance of L. terrestris middens was significantly (p < 0.01) greater on the farmyard manure amended plots than the compost or control plots, with a ca. 38% higher midden abundance. These data suggest that compost is a not a good alternative to farmyard manure to improve L. terrestris populations when converting from conventional (plough) to reduced tillage (stubble cultivated) regimes. ã 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Midden Minimum tillage Lumbricus terrestris Farmyard manure
1. Introduction Anecic or deep burrowing earthworms are important to low intensity tillage farming (Edwards and Bohlen, 1996). Lumbricus terrestris is an abundant anecic earthworm in the UK and it can be considered as a keystone species for agriculture due to its burrowing activities that improve soil structure and water permeability (Nuutinen and Butt, 2003); surface activities that result in carbon and nitrogen hotspots (Wilcox et al., 2002); and middens which are biological hotspots in comparison to surrounding soil (Butt and Lowe, 2007). However, intensive cultivation practices (ploughing) significantly reduces their abundance (Edwards and Lofty, 1982), and long term ploughing can lead to local extinctions (Kladivko et al., 1997). Thus, as farming practices are changing from ploughing to reduced tillage regimes, strategies to support the abundance of their populations are needed. Earthworm abundances in arable cultivations can be enhanced by farmyard manure additions (Whalen et al., 1998) and L. terrestris colonisation is linked to animal manures (Karberg and Lilleskov, 2009). However, there are large areas of arable farmland in the UK where farmyard manure is not readily available in comparison to other organic matters such as compost. It has been shown that L. terrestris has a broad feeding range (Curry and Schmidt, 2007), and
* Corresponding author. Fax: +44 1582 760981. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.L. Stroud). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2015.10.007 0929-1393/ ã 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
re-distributes organic matter to form middens, thus compost may be a suitable alternative to enhancing L. terrestris abundance. The aim of this research was to test whether L. terrestris populations could be enhanced by organic amendments in a conversion from a conventional (ploughed) tillage regime to a minimum tillage regime. 2. Material and methods The trial was carried out at the Rothamsted experimental farm in Hertfordshire, UK. The soil was characterised as a flinty clay loam of the Batcombe soil series, with a pH 7 and organic matter content of 2.6%. It is managed using a conventional regime (fertiliser, pesticides) and for the past 3 years has been under minimum tillage. For tillage, a Lemken Karat stubble cultivator consisting of tines, discs and a crumbler roll was used at a depth of ca. 10 cm. The trial is managed under an arable rotation series, and at the time of sampling was under winter wheat. The experiment was a complete randomised block design with 9 m 4 m experimental plot units and 45 plots were surveyed. The survey included five replicate plots per condition (farm yard manure, chopped first with a muck spreader, and green waste compost both applied by hand at 3.5 t C ha 1 in September over the past three years) and a control, where no organic amendment was supplied per block (n = 3). The abundance of L. terrestris was estimated by counting their middens. A 1 m2 square quadrat was used to transect 6 m2 per plot in April 2015 in order to survey 17% of each plot area (30 m2 per
J.L. Stroud et al. / Applied Soil Ecology 98 (2016) 282–284
283
3.5
3.0
Middens per m
2
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0 Control 2
Fig. 1. Lumbricus terrestris middens per m under 3.5 t C ha (n = 45) is presented as the SED.
1
Compost
Farmyard manure
farmyard manure, compost or control (0 t C ha
treatment, and 270 m2 studied for midden abundance in total) This time point prior to stem elongation was chosen to avoid crop damage from the survey, and a pre-study determined the optimal quadrat size and plot area to test the differences between the treatments at p < 0.05 significance. One in every 20 plots was resurveyed for middens for quality control, ensuring that midden counts were 100 10% accurate. Disturbance of middens was minimized as the crop field trial experiment is ongoing, but the presence of L. terrestris was confirmed on selected middens by directly applying mustard (10 g mustard powder per 750 ml) solution via a 20 ml syringe to the burrow opening. Within 3 min, an earthworm was recovered, rinsed and species identified as L. terrestris using standard earthworm keys before being returned to the soil. Additionally, midden counts were validated using the method described by Singh et al., (2015) on 10 spots (0.25 cm2 areas) representing midden density across the field. The midden abundance data (the mean of 6 1 m2 counts per plot, 15 plots per treatment) was tested for normality, required log transformation, then the analysis of variance (ANOVA) on this complete randomized block design was carried out to assess the statistical significance of midden abundance on the field plots in relation to organic amendments. Following Singh et al. (2015), spearmans correlation was used to quantify the relationship between midden density and L. terrestris recovery (Genstat 2012, 14th addition, VSN International Ltd., UK). 3. Results and discussion Midden counts were a valid estimation of L. terrestris sub-adult and adults with a spearman correlation of rs = 0.79, p = 0.016. The average mass was 5.68 1.3 g. This is in agreement with previous surveys of midden counts (Singh et al., 2015). Farmyard manure significantly (p < 0.01) enhanced midden abundance by 38% in comparison to both the control and compost amendment, indicating that it is the better amendment for improving L. terrestris abundance (Fig. 1). Manure is often linked to their abundance, where animal faeces influence L. terrestris invasions in woodlands (Karberg and Lilleskov, 2009) and in laboratory feeding studies, this species shows a preference for
1
SED
) treatments. The standard errors of the differences of the means
dung (Doube et al., 1997). Considering both organic amendments were supplied at the same carbon rate, these data suggest that the L. terrestris preferred farmyard manure amendments indicating itis a better food resource than compost. As L. terrestris are slow colonisers, recorded at invading a field at 4.6 m per year (Nuutinen et al., 2011) choosing an appropriate amendment that rapidly enhances their abundance in agroecosystems is important. The typical populations on this min till field trial were an average 2.5 middens per m2 (n = 45) are generally below values reported in the literature. Studies on different cropping systems in the US gave midden counts between 18 and 28 per m2 for no till, and 1–3 middens per m2 for conventional tillage (Simonsen et al., 2010). Little is known as to how fields can be re-populated and whether it is resource efficient to do so on every soil type. A total of 7 middens per m2 was the highest number detected, coupled to the significant response of abundance to organic matter supplementation, suggests that this field trial could support a 3-fold higher population of this species under farmyard manure amendments. These findings are in agreement with Leroy et al. (2008), who showed that general earthworm populations are enhanced by FYM amendments in comparison to compost. In conclusion, compost seems to be a less suitable alternative to farmyard manure to enhance L. terrestris abundances during the first years of the transition to reduced tillage. Acknowledgements This work was supported by grants from DEFRA (SP1312), HGCA (RD-2012-3787) and SARIC (NE/M016714/1). We thank Richard Hull from Rothamsted Research for providing the quadrats and Rodger White for statistical analysis. References Butt, K.R., Lowe, C.N., 2007. Presence of earthworm species within and beneath Lumbricus terrestris (L.) middens. Eur. J. Soil Biol. 43, S57–S60. Curry, J.P., Schmidt, O., 2007. The feeding ecology of earthworms—a review. Pedobiologia 50, 463–477. Doube, B.M., Schmidt, O., Killham, K., Correll, R., 1997. Influence of mineral soil on the palatability of organic matter for lumbricid earthworms: a simple food preference study. Soil. Biol. Biochem. 29, 569–575.
284
J.L. Stroud et al. / Applied Soil Ecology 98 (2016) 282–284
Edwards, C.A., Bohlen, P.J., 1996. Biology and Ecology of Earthworms. Chapman and Hall Ltd.; Chapman and Hall, Inc., 2-6 Boundary Row, London SE1 8HN, England; 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York, USA. Edwards, C.A., Lofty, J.R., 1982. The effect of direct drilling and minimal cultivation on earthworm populations. J. Appl. Ecol. 19, 723–734. Karberg, N., Lilleskov, E., 2009. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fecal pellet decomposition is accelerated by the invasive earthworm Lumbricus terrestris. Biol. Invasions 11, 761–767. Kladivko, E.J., Akhouri, N.M., Weesies, G., 1997. Earthworm populations and species distributions under no-till and conventional tillage in Indiana and Illinois. Soil. Biol. Biochem. 29, 613–615. Leroy, B.L.M., Schmidt, O., Van den Bossche, A., Reheul, D., Moens, M., 2008. Earthworm population dynamics as influenced by the quality of exogenous organic matter. Pedobiologia 52, 139–150. Nuutinen, V., Butt, K.R., 2003. Interaction of Lumbricus terrestris L. burrows with field subdrains: the 7th international symposium on earthworm ecology. Pedobiologia 47, 578–581.
Nuutinen, V., Butt, K.R., Jauhiainen, L., 2011. Field margins and management affect settlement and spread of an introduced dew-worm (Lumbricus terrestris L.) population. Pedobiologia 54, S167–S172. Simonsen, J., Posner, J., Rosemeyer, M., Baldock, J., 2010. Endogeic and anecic earthworm abundance in six Midwestern cropping systems. Appl. Soil Ecol. 44, 147–155. Singh, P., Heikkinen, J., Ketoja, E., Nuutinen, V., Palojärvi, A., Sheehy, J., Esala, M., Mitra, S., Alakukku, L., Regina, K., 2015. Tillage and crop residue management methods had minor effects on the stock and stabilization of topsoil carbon in a 30-year field experiment. Sci. Total Environ. 518–519, 337–344. Whalen, J.K., Parmelee, R.W., Edwards, C.A., 1998. Population dynamics of earthworm communities in corn agroecosystems receiving organic or inorganic fertilizer amendments. Biol. Fertil. Soils 27, 400–407. Wilcox, C., Domínguez, J., Parmelee, R., McCartney, D., 2002. Soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics in Lumbricus terrestris L. middens in four arable, a pasture, and a forest ecosystems. Biol. Fertil. Soils 36, 26–34.