1. Introduction
While forest cover may be the most sustainable land-use in the humid tropics, it is unfeasible in areas with high human population densities; smallholder farmers need the land to meet their immediate need, food production. One compromise, postulated to maintain ecosystem function, and provide food and timber is to combine silviculture with agriculture: growing food crops between tree seedlings at timber stand establishment and then introducing a cropping phase at each routine thinning (Norgrove, 2003). When farmers clear, slash, burn and till land in “slash and burn agriculture”, earthworm density, diversity and activity are often reduced. For example, such reductions in Hyperiodrilus africanus