Geographic determinants of oribatid mite communities structure and diversity across Europe: a longitudinal perspective

The aim of the study reported here was to assess the impact of climate continentality across Europe on the structure and diversity of oribatid communities. Five sites were chosen along a West–East transect from The Netherlands to the Moscow region in Russia in the zone of deciduous forest. Our results suggest that at the chosen scale climate has a moderate impact on abundance and biomass of oribatid communities. However there is a clear impact of continentality on the functional structure and diversity of oribatid populations expressed as the increase of soil-dwelling species abundance towards the East and the decrease of litter-dwellers. There are also strong indications of a gradual faunistic shift along the transect. Soil type plays a modulating role in oribatid communities composition and species richness.