Brown-coal opencast mining provides a virgin soil substratum at a scale of square
kilometres that is open to primary succession. Focusing on this process, we
investigated changes in collembolan species composition in a long-term study
that lasted almost 40 years (1960–1998) at mine sites, afforested with deciduous
trees. The geological overburden, which characterises the soil quality, consisted
mainly of Pleistocene and Tertiary sands, interspersed with lignite and dark Tertiary
loam and clay.
According to their appearance during the primary succession, we established eight
colonising groups, representing 90 of 113 species found. Results from soil samples as
well as from pitfall traps were taken into account for the definition of the groups.
Thus, edaphic and epedaphic life forms were equally regarded. Generally, ‘‘initial’’,
‘‘pioneer’’ and ‘‘woodland’’ groups were discernible.
Largest changes in species composition occurred during the first ten years, as
indicated by decreasing species turnover rates and increasing alpha diversity. A
comparison with other (essentially shorter) studies on Collembola of mine sites (12 in
Europe, 3 in other parts of the world) showed that some pioneer species are
cosmopolitan whilst others seem to be regionally specific. Important events in the
ecosystem development of mine sites, as indicated by the collembolan community,
are the first occurrence of other humiphagous soil animal groups, especially that of
earthworms, followed by a disappearance of the ectohumus layer. The similarity
between collembolan communities of mine sites and of adjacent native woodlands is
greatest ten years after afforestation. Fifty years after afforestation, the collembolan
community still differed markedly from that of native stands. Thus, a gradual
development of the mine site collembolan communities to a comparable native
woodland community is not evident from the data.
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