Beta-diversity partitioning approach in soil zoology: A case of Collembola in pine forests

It was demonstrated that a square meter of the forest floor contained around a third of Collembola species known to inhabit East European pine forests. The structure of springtails diversity corresponds to the beta-type. The largest proportion to the total gamma-diversity was made by subzone-specific collembolan species compositions. The contributions of the location and site scales within the same subzone were equivalent. Analysis of time series showed that around a quarter of the species composition in a habitat is “replaced” across season and year series, in spite of the substantial sampling effort. The dependence of estimates of α- and β-components of diversity on the number of partitioning levels is discussed.