The time
and treatment interaction was not significant, however. The Bonferroni test (Table 3)
showed that nematode species numbers of 10 and 30 days post-placement were
significantly less than after 60 days and leaf litter addition significantly reduced them
also (C.L5M5H). K-dominance curves (Fig. 4) plotted for different stages of the
experiment revealed that: first, the presence of leaf litter reduced nematode species
diversity; second, dose effects changed over the experimental time, so that by the end of
the experiment, a negative dose effect was observed, i.e. C.L.M5H; and third, after 30 days, diversity of the ambient nematode community (F) was higher than that of the
detritus samples (L, M and H) but lower than the controls (C).