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Is earthworms' dispersal facilitated by the ecosystem engineering activities of conspecifics?

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Abstract

In this work, we documented the influence of earthworm's galleries on their speed of movements during dispersal events in the soil. We quantified, by using X-rays, the dispersal behaviour of earthworms in the soil. The observations were conducted in mesocosms in controlled conditions for 12 h. Our experiments revealed that during a dispersal sequence of a batch of individuals of the species Aporrectodea terrestris (Savigny 1826): (a) individuals used preferentially existing conspecifics' galleries, (b) individual velocity increased after each dispersal event and (c) the lag time before each dispersal event did not seem to be influenced by previous dispersers. Therefore, dispersal seems to be facilitated by conspecifics' activity, which strongly supports the hypothesis of a feedback between ecosystem engineers' activity and their dispersal speed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as a part of the project EDISP no. ANR-08-JCJC-0023. We would like to thank the Centre IRD Ile de France and specifically Corinne Rouland-Lefèvre for access to the climatic room and to the park. A great thank to Sébastien Barot, Manuel Blouin, Lise Dupont and Hélène Dudeck for their help. Gaël Caro was supported by a French Ph.D. grant from the Ministère de la Recherche.

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Caro, G., Abourachid, A., Decaëns, T. et al. Is earthworms' dispersal facilitated by the ecosystem engineering activities of conspecifics?. Biol Fertil Soils 48, 961–965 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-012-0694-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-012-0694-1

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