Abstract: We examined the distribution of soil fauna in four typical vegetation types (trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, shrubs+herbaceous plants) in the forest-grassland ecotone of the West Tianshan Nature Reserve. Large soil faunas were collected using hand picking method, while small and medium-sized soil faunas were separated using dry funnel method. We analyzed the variations of soil fauna community among different vegetation types. The results showed that the family Isognathidae, suborder Tetranychus, suborder Tetranychus, and suborder Gamasides were the dominant groups of soil faunas across the four vegetation types. The forest habitat had the highest number of soil fauna groups, density, diversity, richness, and evenness index. Soil fauna had the characteristics of surface aggregation in vertical direction across different vegetation types. There were significant positive correlations between soil organic matter, total phosphorus, water content and other environmental factors and soil fauna. RDA analysis showed that ammonium nitrogen, total nitrogen, and available potassium were the major factors affecting community composition of soil fauna.

Key words: soil fauna, forest-grassland ecotone, vegetation type, West Tianshan Nature Reserve, community characteristics