Abstract: Understanding the spatial heterogeneity and spatial pattern of soil animal community is an important premise to reveal the ecological processes and formation mechanisms of soil animal community and related ecosystem services. The trap method was used to capture ground-dwelling Staphylinidae in a broadleaved and Korean pine forest in Liangshui National Nature Reserve in July, August, and October 2015. Based on the geostatistical analysis, we analyzed the spatial autocorrelation, spatial heterogeneity, spatial distribution pattern and its relationship with environmental factors of ground-dwelling Staphylinidae community. In total, 421 individuals that belonged to 22 species of Staphylinidae were caught in the three samplings. The species and individual abundance of Staphylinidae varied greatly among survey months. The community composition significantly differed among different months. Results of Moran’s I coefficient indicated that the species and individual abundance of Staphylinidae community showed a complex spatial autocorrelation in the 0-300 m spatial scale, being significant at some specific scales. Staphylinidae community exhibited a medium spatial heterogeneity, with spatial variability being regulated by both structural and random factors. The spatial pattern of community was simple. The patch structure of community was insignificant in the cold season. The spatial relationships among different species were various, and there was a complex (positive or negative) spatial correlation between species and environmental factors. However, the simple Mantel test demonstrated that there was no significant spatial correlation between the two. Results of CCA analysis showed that topographic and soil factors had no significant effects on changes of species distribution of ground dwelling Staphylinidae. Our results revealed the variation of spatial heterogeneity and spatial pattern of Staphylinidae, providing basis for understanding the mechanism underlying community assemblage and biodiversity maintenance of ground-dwelling Staphylinidae community.

Key words: Microcystis aeruginosa, Phosphate, Aqueous ecosystem, Temperature, Translocation, Isotope tracer