EES 4th year field course worm project 2023

Carmichael, C., Colety, A., MacCormack-Montequin, C., Schulze, S., Thomson, J., Thorpe, I., and Young, H.

Worm project from the 2023 EES 4th year field course, exploring the broad question "How do soil characteristics and soil type influence earthworm abundance and diversity?"

Research questions for this project are:

1. Does grassland management affect earthworm abundance?
2. Does grassland management affect community age structure of earthworms?
3. Does grassland management affect the abundance & proportion of earthworm ecotypes?
4. Do soil environmental variables affect earthworm abundance and community structure?

After sampling a managed and unmanaged grassland at Piyoulish farm near Aviemore, Scotland, we concluded:

1. Grassland management affects earthworm abundance, but the difference is driven by community age structure. Adult abundance does not differ with management but juvenile abundance is higher in unmowed grassland.
2. See the above.
3. Grassland management affects the distribution of anecic worms, but not epigeic or endogeic. There are more anecic earthworms found in unmowed grassland.
4. Earthworm abundance is influenced by soil pH and temperature. We found no earthworms in the woodland habitats during a pilot study due to the low pH. The abundance of epigeic earthworms decreases as soil temperature decreases.

Repository structure

All the code we used to analyze and visualize data can be found in the folder "script"

Original data located in the folder "data"

Charts and figures produced are found in the folder "img"