EFFECT OF HABITAT QUALITY, MICROCLIMATIC CONDITIONS AND WASTE WATER CONTAMINATION ON DIVERSITY & DISTRIBUTION OF COLLEMBOLA COMMUNITY

Soil biodiversity is undergoing dramatic changes due to human and climatic interference, habitat loss and fragmentation due to land use changes, increasing pollution and degradation in terrestrial ecosystems. The overall effect of habitat loss is on the loss of soil micro arthropods diversity which is observed due to negative response of substrate quality. Adverse microclimatic conditions may also be detrimental to species specific communities along with waste water contamination. Thus, an investigation has been carried out to ascertain the effect of habitat quality, microclimatic conditions and waste water contamination on diversity and distribution of Collembola community. For this, 4 samples have been taken monthly for a period of one year from two different study sites of Aligarh along with edapho-chemical properties. We observed the density of Collembola (18.8 ind./sample) was always approximately three times more in agriculture site than in wasteland (7.6 ind./sample) site. Population of Collembola was statistically positive significant with reference to soil organic matter % (r = 0.621, P>0.05), Soil Organic Carbon % (r = 0.622, P>0.05), available nitrogen (r = 0.622, P>0.05) and Potash (r = 0.562, P>0.05) in Agriculture site whereas these all were statistically insignificant in Wasteland site.