OPEN ACCESS The Journal of Threatened Taxa is dedicated to building evidence for conservaton globally by publishing peer-reviewed artcles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All artcles published in JoTT are registered under Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License unless otherwise mentoned. JoTT allows unrestricted use of artcles in any medium, reproducton, and distributon by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publicaton. Journal of Threatened Taxa Building evidence for conservaton globally www.threatenedtaxa.org ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Communication Seasonal distribution and abundance of earthworms (Annelida: Oligochaeta) in relation to the edaphic factors around Udupi Power Corporation Limited (UPCL), Udupi District, southwestern coast of India T.S. Harish Kumar, M. Siddaraju, C.H. Krishna Bhat & K.S. Sreepada 26 March 2018 | Vol. 10 | No. 3 | Pages: 11432-11442 10.11609/jot.3806.10.3.11432-11442 For Focus, Scope, Aims, Policies and Guidelines visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-0 For Artcle Submission Guidelines visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions For Policies against Scientfc Misconduct visit htp://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-2 For reprints contact <[email protected]> Threatened Taxa Seasonal distributon and abundance of earthwormsJournal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 March 2018 | 10(3): 11432–11442Kumar et al. Seasonal distribution and abundance of earthworms Communication (Annelida: Oligochaeta) in relation to the edaphic factors ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) around Udupi Power Corporation Limited (UPCL), ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Udupi District, southwestern coast of India OPEN ACCESS T.S. Harish Kumar 1, M. Siddaraju 2, C.H. Krishna Bhat 3 & K.S. Sreepada 4 1,4 Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University, Mangalagangothri, Mangaluru, Karnataka 574199, India 2 Sri Sathya Sai Loka Seva P.U. College, Alike, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka 574235, India 3 KSHEMA, Nite deemed to be University, Deralakate, Mangaluru, Karnataka 575018, India 1 [email protected], 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected], 4 [email protected] (corresponding author) Abstract: Seasonal distributon and abundance of four species of earthworms belonging to three families—Rhinodrilidae (Pontoscolex corethrurus), Megascolecidae (Megascolex konkanensis and Metaphire houllet) and Octochaetdae (Karmiella karnatakensis)—were studied in three habitats (residental, agricultural and forest) along with edaphic factors around Udupi Power Corporaton Limited (UPCL), Karnataka, India between September 2014 and August 2016. Among the four species, P. corethrurus was collected throughout the year and was most abundant in residental habitats such as colacasia garden, coconut and banana pits. M. konkanensis was collected from coconut plantatons, banana plantatons and forest soil during monsoon and post-monsoon periods. M. houllet was collected from manure heaps, coconut and banana pits of residental habitat, coconut plantatons and forest soil. K. karnatakensis was collected from garden soil in residental habitat during the post-monsoon period, coconut plantatons and soil mixed with forest leaf liter during monsoon and post-monsoon periods. The soil temperature difer signifcantly during diferent seasons in residental (P= 0.01) and agricultural (P=0.03) habitats whereas moisture shows highly signifcant diference in agricultural habitat (P=0.00037) during diferent seasons. P. corethrurus showed positve correlaton with organic carbon during pre-monsoon and C/N rato during monsoon in the residental habitat. It shows negatve correlaton with pH during the monsoon period. M. houllet showed positve correlaton with organic carbon in residental habitat during the pre-monsoon and in forest habitat during monsoon periods. M. konkanensis showed positve correlaton with electrical conductvity in agricultural habitats during monsoon period. K. karnatakensis showed positve correlaton with moisture during monsoon and with C/N rato during post-monsoon period in forest habitats. Keywords: Earthworm distributon, edaphic factors, Megascolecidae, Octochaetdae, Rhinodrilidae, Udupi Power Corporaton Limited (UPCL). DOI: htp://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3806.10.3.11432-11442 | ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:94330186-7D5D-48CF-A4A8-F3B5552E4F46 Editor: J.W. Reynolds, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, Canada. Date of publicaton: 26 March 2018 (online & print) Manuscript details: Ms # 3806 | Received 20 September 2017 | Final received 03 March 2018 | Finally accepted 10 March 2018 Citaton: Kumar, T.S.H., M. Siddaraju, C.H.K. Bhat & K.S. Sreepada (2018). Seasonal distributon and abundance of earthworms (Annelida: Oligochaeta) in relaton to the edaphic factors around Udupi Power Corporaton Limited (UPCL), Udupi District, southwestern coast of India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 10(3): 11432–11442; htp://doi.org/10.11609/jot.3806.10.3.11432-11442 Copyright: © Kumar et al. 2018. Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this artcle in any medium, reproducton and distributon by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publicaton. Funding: SC/ST Research fellowship from Mangalore University. Competng interests: The authors declare no competng interests. Author Details: Mr. T.S. Harish Kumar is a research scholar in the Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University working in the feld of earthworm taxonomy and diversity for PhD. Dr. M. Siddaraju is a lecturer in Sri Sathya Sai Loka Seva P.U. College, and he is also a expert in the feld of earthworm taxonomy. Dr. C.H. Krishna Bhat is a retred Biostatstcian and currently he is working as visitng Professor at Nite deemed to be University, Mangaluru. Dr. K.S. Sreepada is a Professor in Applied Zoology at Mangalore University. Author Contributon: All authors have equally contributed. Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to Mangalore University for providing the necessary facilites to undertake this research work. We are thankful to Dr. Raghuramulu Y., Sri. N. Hariyappa, and Dr. Seetharam, H.G., Central Cofee Research Insttute (CCRI), Cofee Research Staton, Chikmagalur District, Karnataka, India for their support during soil analysis and Mr. Vivek Hasyagar for earthworms photography. 11432 Seasonal distributon and abundance of earthworms Kumar et al. INTRODUCTION 1997), central Himalaya (Bhadauria et al. 2000), Tamil Nadu (Gobi & Vijayalashmi 2004; Kathireswari et al. India is a vast country with great diversity of plants 2005, 2008), Chennai (Begum & Ismail 2004), Rajasthan and animals supported with tropical and sub-tropical (Tripathi & Bharadwaj 2004), western Himalaya (Paliwal climates. Soil faunal populaton is very important in & Julka 2005), Pondicherry (Sathianarayan & Khan 2006), many agro ecosystems; because the soil organisms northern Indian states (Dhiman & Batsh 2006), Tripura promote soil fertlity (Lee 1985; Werner & Dindal (Chaudhuri et al. 2008), Utarakhand (Joshi & Aga 2009), 1989). The major soil organisms include earthworms, southern Karnataka (Kale & Karmegam 2010), Garhwal centpedes, millipedes and microorganisms. Of these, Himalaya (Joshi et al. 2010), Kashmir Valley (Ishtya & earthworms are considered as one of the major soil Anisha 2011), Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka invertebrates belonging to the phylum Annelida and (Siddaraju et al. 2010), Jammu, northeastern India c l a s s O l i g o c h a e t a . O l i g o c h a e t e s a r e m a i n l y d i v i d e d (Rajkhowa et al. 2014), and Kerala (Narayanan et al. into megadriles and microdriles. Megadriles live in both 2016). terrestrial and aquatc systems whereas microdriles Earthworms feed on organic mater and liter. prefer only aquatc systems. Globally, there are about They enrich soil fertlity by adding nutrients to the soil 4,400 diferent species of earthworms (Reynolds & through their burrowing actvites and are recognized Wetzel 2017) and from India 505 species of earthworms as ecological engineers due to their strong interacton (Julka 2014; Ahmed & Julka 2017; Narayanan et al. 2017) with soil functoning in the ecosystem (Jones et al. have been reported. 1994; Lavelle et al. 1994). Earthworm casts are highly Diversity and distributon of earthworms have rich in organic mater compared to the non-ingested been studied from diferent parts of the world, viz., surrounding soil. The efect of earthworms on the Bulgaria (Mihailova 1964; Stojanovic et al. 2012), Thrace dynamics of soil organic mater depends on the tme (Mihailova 1966), Myanmar (Gates 1972; Reynolds and space (Mora et al. 2005). Earthworms are known 2009), Australia (Jamieson & Wampler 1979; Blakemore to increase the transfer of organic carbon and nitrogen 2000; Blakemore & Paolet 2006), Argentna (Mischis & into soil through their gut microbial actvites and they Brigada 1985; Mischis 1992, 1993; Mischis & Righi 1999; facilitate the stabilizaton and accumulaton of soil Laura & Ines 2001), Turkey (Omodeo & Rota 1991), organic mater (Desjardins et al. 2003). The cycling Australia, Japan and India (Blakemore 1994, 2004, 2006), process of C and N in agro- ecosystems depends on the Bangladesh (Reynolds 1994; Reynolds et al. 1995b; Das & cropping system and management practces (Fonte et al. Reynolds 2003), northern Neotropical region (Fragoso et 2007). The earthworm species and their interactons