Invasive Alien Weed Eupatorium Kunming Soil Animal Communities

Community characteristics of soil macrofauna are related with manyenvironmental factors, the surface vegetation is the most important one whichprovides feasible condition for soil faunas. Invasive alien plant Eupatoriumadenophorum invaded Yunnan province in 1940s and spread into Sichuan, Guizhou,Guangxi and Tibet in the last 50 years. Yunnan and Sichuan were the most seriouslyimpacted provinces. The data of this paper were collected from Kunming andChengjiang in Yunnan province, including three ecosystem types (coniferous forest,broad-leaved forest and meadow) in three mountains. During the rainy season, fromJune to November in 2005, we collected more than 50 thousand soil animal samples,which belong to two Phyla, eleven classes, total in 19 groups.The original vegetation in coniferous forest has abundant litter which provides nutrition for soil faunas. It has the richest soil faunas groups of all the three ecosystems, and meadow has the least. E. adenophorum has completely changed the original vegetation, the herbage was replaced by E. adenophorum single denseness population. There is nearly no other local plant living in infested area after invasion. This research investigates the changes after the original vegetation replaced by the single population of E. adenophorum. The data proves that the invasive alien E. adenophorum made the diversity of soil community decreased in Kunming, Yunnan province.E. adenophorum has significant impacts on the diversity of soil macrofauna. Compared to non-infested area, the Shannon-wiener Index and the Simpson Index reduced with some exceptional months. The Pielou's evenness Index decreased after...