TY  - JOUR
A1  - Palm, Juliane
A1  - van Schaik, N. Loes M. B.
A1  - Schröder-Esselbach, Boris
T1  - Modelling distribution patterns of anecic, epigeic and endogeic earthworms at catchment-scale in agro-ecosystems
T2  - Pedobiologia : international journal of soil biology
N2  - Species distribution models are useful for identifying driving environmental factors that determine earthworm distributions as well as for predicting earthworm distribution patterns and abundances at different scales. However, due to large efforts in data acquisition, studies on larger scales are rare and often focus on single species or earthworms in general. In this study, we use boosted regression tree models (BRTs) for predicting the distribution of the three functional earthworm types, i.e. anecics, endogeics and epigeics, in an agricultural area in Baden-Wurttemberg (Southwest Germany).
 First, we predicted presence and absence and later earthworm abundances, considering predictors depicting land management, topography, and soil conditions as well as biotic interaction by using the abundance of the other functional earthworm types. The final presence-absence models performed reasonably well, with explained deviances between 24 and 51% after crossvalidation. Models for abundances of anecics and endogeics were less successful, since the high small-scale variability and patchiness in earthworm abundance influenced the representativeness of the field measurements. This resulted in a significant model uncertainty, which is practically very difficult to overcome with earthworm sampling campaigns at the catchment scale.
 Results showed that management practices (i.e. disturbances), topography, soil conditions, and biotic interactions with other earthworm groups are the most relevant predictors for spatial distribution (incidence) patterns of all three functional groups. The response curves and contributions of predictors differ for the three functional earthworm types. Epigeics are also controlled by topographic features, endogeics by soil parameters.
KW  - Species distribution models
KW  - Earthworms
KW  - Soil hydrology
KW  - Boosted regression trees (BRT)
KW  - Distribution patterns
KW  - Biotic interactions
Y1  - 2013
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/35385
SN  - 0031-4056
VL  - 56
IS  - 1
SP  - 23
EP  - 31
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Jena
ER  -