3. Results
3.1. Earthworm population assessment
After the three years under forage treatment, differences were
found in earthworm abundance and biomass across treatments
(P ¼ 0.002; P < 0.001 respectively; Table 2), with the white clover
treatment having greater abundances than the others (P < 0.05).
Furthermore, the community assemblage of the three earthworm
functional groups differed between season (P < 0.001 Epigeics;
P ¼ 0.008 Endogeics and P < 0.001 Anecics; Table 2), with higher
endogeic and anecic counts and lower epigeic counts in spring.
Anecic earthworm abundance was greater (P ¼ 0.027) in the white
clover treatment, than in the ryegrass 200 N plot (P < 0.05) with the
other forages intermediate. Neither epigeic, nor endogeic functional
groups varied among treatments (P ¼ 0.132; P ¼ 0.202
respectively) and MANOVA analysis found that overall for the three
groups there was only a tendency for forage treatment to affect
community assemblage (P < 0.10) (see Table S1 for full community
assemblage). There were no significant interactions between
treatment and season for total earthworms, biomass or the individual
functional groups.
3.2. Nematode population assessment
The abundance of nematodes did not differ among forages
(P ¼ 0.176) or season (P ¼ 0.277) (Table 3), ranging between 38 and
51 g1 DM soil. Overall, bacterial and fungal feeding nematodes
dominated all treatments. The abundance of fungal feeders
(P ¼ 0.005) and herbivorous nematodes (P < 0.001) did differ between
treatments with greater numbers of fungal feeders in the
clovers and chicory treatments compared to the ryegrass treatments,
whilst the herbivores had the greatest abundances in the