---
title: "Fine-scale recovery of soil mite communities after local extinctions in grasslands"
id: "plos-one-12-fine-scale-recovery-of-mite-communities-following-local-extinctions-on"
canonical_url: "https://medichelpline.com/clinical-feed/plos-one-12-fine-scale-recovery-of-mite-communities-following-local-extinctions-on"
content_type: "clinical_feed_article"
specialty: "General"
source_name: "PLOS ONE (Medicine)"
source_url: "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0357403"
published_at: "2026-09-01T14:00:00.000Z"
evidence_level: "Journal Feed"
license: "CC-BY-NC-4.0 / Informational Use"
---
# Fine-scale recovery of soil mite communities after local extinctions in grasslands
## Provenance & Clinical Metadata
- **Canonical URL:** https://medichelpline.com/clinical-feed/plos-one-12-fine-scale-recovery-of-mite-communities-following-local-extinctions-on
- **Specialty:** [General](https://medichelpline.com/clinical-feed/general.md)
- **Primary Source:** PLOS ONE (Medicine)
- **Source URL:** [Original Journal Publication](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0357403)
- **Published At:** 2026-09-01T14:00:00.000Z
- **Evidence Rating:** Journal Feed
## Executive GIST (TL;DR)
- Study used half-open field mesocosms to test short-term recovery of **soil mite** communities after experimental defaunation in newly planted grasslands on two soil types (chernozem and sandy). - Grass mixtures were grown over three consecutive eight-month periods while environmental variables and vegetation biomass were monitored to assess drivers of recovery. - Recovery trajectories differed among mite groups: **Mesostigmata** and Heterostigmata (Pygmephoroidea, Tarsonemidae) showed rapid recovery, likely reflecting effective dispersal and high population growth. - Effect sizes reported: Mesostigmata ES = +0.07 ± 0.91; Pygmephoroidea ES = +0.20 ± 0.61; Tarsonemidae ES = −0.05 ± 0.36, indicating generally small or neutral defaunation effects for these groups. - **Oribatid** mites exhibited consistently slow and often incomplete recovery (ES = −1.08 ± 0.66), consistent with limited dispersal and slow life cycles. - Oribatid recovery varied with edaphic conditions and was more favorable in chernozem than in sandy soil, indicating environmental modulation of recolonisation. - Abundance of faster-recovering groups was generally positively associated with vegetation biomass, suggesting improved microhabitat conditions and resource availability facilitate recolonisation. - Authors conclude that recovery is shaped by the interaction of taxon-specific life-history traits and environmental context and that different mite taxa respond differently to disturbance, with implications for soil resilience assessments. - Data supporting the study are available in the Zenodo repository (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20084648).
## Clinical Analysis & Structured Key Points
Fine-scale recovery of mite communities following local extinctions on grasslands | PLOS One Browse Subject Areas ? Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here . Article Authors Metrics Comments Media Coverage Peer Review Reader Comments Figures Figures Abstract Agricultural management can substantially reduce soil biodiversity, potentially impairing key ecosystem processes. Understanding the capacity of soil biota to recover after severe disturbance is therefore essential for evaluating soil resilience. Soil-dwelling mite communities are known to respond sensitively to environmental change. We investigated the recovery of soil mite communities in a newly planted grassland using half-open field mesocosms. Grass mixtures were cultivated over three consecutive eight-month periods in chernozem and sandy soils. Within each system, mite assemblages in minimally disturbed soil were compared with those in experimentally defaunated soil, while a range of environmental variables was monitored. This design enabled the assessment of short-term local recovery potential. Mesostigmata (mean ± standard deviation of defaunation effect size, ES= + 0.07 ± 0.91) and Heterostigmata (Pygmephoroidea, ES= + 0.20 ± 0.61; Tarsonemidae, ES = −0.05 ± 0.36) recovered rapidly, likely due to efficient dispersal and high population growth rates. Their abundance was generally positively associated with vegetation biomass, suggesting improved microhabitat conditions and resource availability. In contrast, oribatid mites showed consistently slow and often incomplete recovery (ES = − 1.08 ± 0.66), highlighting the constraints imposed by limited dispersal ability and slow life cycles. Their recovery was further modulated by edaphic conditions, with more favourable outcomes in chernozem than in sandy soil. Overall, these results show that soil mite recovery is shaped by the interaction between taxon-specific life-history traits and environmental conditions. The findings further demonstrate that mite communities respond differently to disturbance, highlighting the need to account for functional differences among taxa when assessing recovery. Citation: Gergócs-Winkler V, Flórián N (2026) Fine-scale recovery of mite communities following local extinctions on grasslands. PLoS One 21(9): e0357403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357403 Editor: Mette Vestergård, Aarhus University, DENMARK Received: May 8, 2026; Accepted: August 17, 2026; Published: September 1, 2026 Copyright: © 2026 Gergócs-Winkler, Flórián. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: The data are available under the following link: https://zenodo.org/records/20084648 in the Zenodo repository titled: >>Data for the manuscript titled “Fine-scale recovery of mite communities following local extinctions on grasslands”<< DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20084648 . Funding: NKFIH Postdoctoral Scholarship (FK 146337) European Regional Development Fund, and Hungarian Government (GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00056). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction Soil is one of the most important natural resources for agricultural production; however, agricultural practices can also cause significant degradation of soil quality [ 1 ]. Tillage, high-input fertilisation, and herbicide application are widely used to meet the continually increasing demand for crop production [ 2 , 3 ]. Although effective in the short term, these practices can adversely affect the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil, thereby undermining soil health and, ultimately, the sustainability of crop production [ 4 ]. One of the most critical consequences of intensive agricultural management is the loss of soil biodiversity [ 5 ]. Soil biota play essential roles in key ecological processes, including organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling, and biological pest control [ 6 , 7 ]. The disruption or loss of members of the complex soil food web impairs these processes, reducing ecosystem functioning and making crop production systems less efficient and more dependent on external inputs [ 6 ]. Disturbances associated with agricultural management are, to a large extent, unavoidable in agroecosystems. Therefore, maintaining long-term soil health requires a thorough understanding of the regenerative capacity of soil biota following such disturbances. In particular, it is essential to determine both the mechanisms and the rate of recovery of soil communities in order to assess the severity and persistence of management-induced impacts. In the context of soil health monitoring, it is also crucial to understand the time required for soil animal communities to re-establish following disturbance, as this determines the resilience of soil ecosystem functioning [ 8 ]. Soil-dwelling mites are among the most abundant arthropods in agricultural soils [ 9 ] and are considered important indicators of soil biological recovery [ 10 ]. To investigate the regenerative capacity of soil biota in abandoned cropland, we focused on soil-dwelling mites. They constitute a highly diverse group of microarthropods, exhibiting a wide range of ecological tolerances, resource requirements, body sizes, life-history strategies, and functional roles [ 11 , 12 ]. The majority of soil-dwelling mites belong to three principal orders: Mesostigmata, Trombidiformes (with the largest group of Prostigmata), and Sarcoptiformes (containing Endeostigmata and Oribatida) [ 11 ]. Soil mites play significant roles in soil ecological processes. Many species feed on organic matter, thereby contributing to decomposition (e.g., Prostigmata, [ 12 , 13 ]). Others consume soil bacteria and fungi, influencing the activity and structure of soil microbial communities (e.g., Oribatida, [ 14 ]). In addition, predatory mites, particularly within the Mesostigmata, contribute to the regulation of soil-dwelling pest populations [ 15 ]. The sensitivity of these mite groups to disturbance is very variable. Species within the suborder Prostigmata are often reported as effective colonisers following various disturbances, such as fire [ 16 ] and land recultivation after mining [ 17 , 18 ]. They may also reach high abundances in agricultural soils [ 19 , 20 ]. Mesostigmata are frequently considered even more sensitive to disturbance than some prostigmatid groups. Reduced densities have been observed after several years of cultivation on post-industrial dumps [ 18 ] and spoil heaps [ 21 ], and their abundance is often higher in grasslands than in adjacent croplands [ 22 ]. However, some studies have reported no significant differences in mesostigmatid abundance between agricultural management types [ 23 ], indicating context-dependent responses. Oribatida are generally regarded as the most sensitive group. They exhibit slow recovery following forest disturbance [ 24 – 26 ], drought [ 27 , 28 ], and post-mining restoration [ 18 ]. Consistent with this sensitivity, oribatid mites often show low diversity and density in intensively managed agricultural fields [ 23 ]. Furthermore, life-history traits may influence their recolonisation capacity, with sexually reproducing species generally assumed to be more rapid colonisers than parthenogenetic species [ 29 ]. The regeneration processes of soil-dwelling mite communities after disturbances remain poorly understood at fine spatial scales. Existing research has often focused on describing soil microarthropod communities under different management regimes [ 23 ] or on assessing succession after agricultural abandonment, by comparing natural grasslands with abandoned fields of different ages [ 10 , 30 , 31 ]. However, these studies generally investigate relatively large spatial scales (10–1000 m) and largely overlook the local processes through which soil biota recover from agricultural disturbances. These disturbances may lead to local extinctions and thereby alter the spatial structure of mite communities. Recovery at this scale may occur via two pathways [ 32 ]. First, a portion of the soil-dwelling mites may survive disturbance in either adult or egg form [ 9 ] and subsequently resume reproduction. Second, locally extinct patches may be recolonised through active or passive dispersal from surrounding areas [ 33 ]. The pronounced spatial patchiness of soil mites observed in arable fields [ 34 ] likely reflects a dynamic balance between local extinction and recolonisation shaped by disturbance frequency and recovery time [ 35 ]. Yet similar patchiness is also common in undisturbed habitats. Even in the absence of disturbance, soil microarthropods often exhibit strong spatial autocorrelation at finer spatial scales (5–20 m) [ 34 , 36 ], where environmental variables appear to exert a weaker influence on pattern formation [ 37 ]. This suggest that stochastic dispersal and other neutral processes contribute substantially to the formation and maintenance of patchy distributions. Understanding dispersal is therefore essential for explaining both the recovery of locally extinct patches and the spatial organisation of soil mite communities. Furthermore, local colonisation processes may provide important insights into the mechanisms underlying broader-scale spatial patterns [ 38 ]. Nevertheless, our understanding of the dispersal abilities of soil mites remains limited [ 36 ] as only a low number of studies have examined the local dispersal and short-term recovery capacity of soil mites after disturbance [ 39 , 40 ]. Clarifying the role of dispersal in community reestablishment is therefore crucial for understanding the resilience of soil mite communities in disturbed areas. Here, resilience is defined according to the concept of engineering resilience [ 8 ], and is defined as the rate at which soil-dwelling mite groups return to their pre-disturbance abundance following disturbance [ 32 ]. The recolonisation dynamics of soil mites, following disturbance, can reveal the resilience of soil communities and the factors that shape community assembly. In this study, we investigated how soil mite communities recover following experimental disturbance in a grassland system established on former agricultural land, over three consecutive periods, each lasting eight months. We tested three hypotheses. First, we hypothesised that most major mite groups would recolonise disturbed soil relatively quickly, approaching the community structure observed in undisturbed soil, as reported in similar studies [ 41 ]. However, as a second hypothesis we predicted that recovery trajectories would differ among mite groups, reflecting variation in life-history traits and dispersal abilities [ 12 ]. Third, we hypothesised that, at this spatial scale, recolonisation would be driven primarily by stochastic dispersal processes rather than by environmental variation among years and seasons [ 37 ]. Materials and methods The mesocosms and the treatments The study took place in two locations with two different soil types in Hungary: Őrbottyán (47°40′10.15″N, 19°15′12.15″E), calcareous sandy soil [Hungarian classification, WRB: Mollic Umbrisol (Arenic)]; Nagyhörcsök (46°51′59.69″N, 18°31′08.41″E), calcareous chernozem soil (WRB: Calcaric Phaeozem, [ 42 ]). Both locations were in a recently (2020) planted, small meadow (10 × 30 m) within an agricultural area ( S1 Fig ), which was one year old at the time of the study (2021). Both study sites are managed by the HUN-REN Centre for Agricultural Research, and therefore no additional permits or authorisations were required for conducting the experiments. This experiment was originally designed to compare soil nitrogen cycling in the presence and absence of soil-dwelling mesofauna, using half-open field mesocosms planted with grass [ 43 ]. The absence of mesofauna was achieved by using previously defaunated soil within selected mesocosms. However, under field conditions, the complete exclusion of soil fauna from these defaunated mesocosms could not be maintained throughout the experimental period. Consequently, in addition to the original objectives, these circumstances provided an opportunity to investigate the recolonisation and recovery of defaunated soil by soil mites during the course of the experiment. Nevertheless, several aspects of the original experimental design were not directly relevant to the aims of the present study. In terms of the structure of the mesocosms, they consisted of a plastic cylinder (height: 30 cm, diameter: 40 cm, wall width: 1 cm) and a white, cylinder-shaped, translucent mesh stretched above it (height: 50 cm, S1 Fig ). The cylinder was covered with another mesh at the bottom in order to separate the mesocosm from the surrounding soil and buried in the soil (depth: 15 cm). There were two types of mesocosms: the defaunated and the control ones. The main difference between the control and defaunated mesocosms was the soil in the plastic cylinder. The cylinder contained soil from the surrounding meadow (cleaned of roots) at a depth of 20 cm. For the control mesocosm, this soil was mixed, and then taken into the mesocosm. For the defaunated mesocosms, the same amount of soil was previously treated in three ways in the three different years of the experiment. In February 2021, the soil was taken into a freezer (−18°C) for 2 weeks, and after melting, the soil was taken into 16 defaunated mesocosms. In January-February 2022, the soil was frozen (−18°C) and melted (10°C) two times for two weeks before taking it into the 10 mesocosms in the field. In February 2023, the soil was dried at 105°C for 24 hours, then rewetted and taken into the 10 defaunated mesocosms in the field. In all cases, subsampling after treatment confirmed the absence of mesofauna, indicating that defaunation was initially effective. To limit faunal movement, control and defaunated mesocosms were fitted with meshes of different pore size (300 µm and 34 µm, respectively). However, exposure to field conditions led to partial degradation of the mesh material and loosening of the seals between the mesh and the cylinder walls. Consequently, soil fauna were able to enter, and likely exit, both mesocosm types from the surrounding environment over time. This led to substantial bidirectional movement in both control and defaunated mesocosms, despite their structural differences. Although the experimental design was originally intended to ensure the exclusion of fauna from defaunated treatments, these conditions instead enabled the assessment of recolonisation dynamics under near-natural field conditions across repeated experimental runs. This interpretation is supported by the consistent observation that, across years, individuals from multiple mite groups colonised the defaunated mesocosms, in some cases reaching abundances exceeding those recorded in the control treatments (see in Results). Each year in March, the soil in both control and defaunated mesocosms was homogenised to prepare the seedbed. Then, a perennial grass mixture was sown into each mesocosm [40% Festuca rubra L., 20% F. heterophylla Lam., 20% F. arundinacea Schreb. , and 20% Lolium perenne L.]. The systems were then left undisturbed to enable grass establishment. There were two sampling occasions after four and eight months (in July and October) to monitor the soil variables and the recovery of soil animals. The grass was irrigated once or twice per week, as required. Although termed “control”, these mesocosms did not contain undisturbed soil, as the soil in control mesocosms was mixed each year. This approach was intended to simulate ploughing and reseeding, thereby isolating the processes governing soil recolonisation. Biological analyses The sampling campaign (animal, plant, and soil samples) was conducted every year in July and in October (after 4 and 8 months). For microarthropods, a 400 cm 3 cylindrical soil corer (diameter and depth = 8 cm) was used to take one sample from each mesocosm. Soil fauna was extracted using Berlese-extractor over a period of one week and preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol. To measure microbial biomass, separate 50 cm 3 soil sample was taken (only in 2021 and 2022). On each sampling date, the aboveground vegetation was clipped to a height of 5 cm and removed for a parallel investigation. Mesofauna were investigated in the extracted samples under stereomicroscope (Delta Optical SZ-450-B) and mites were selected from other animals and soil particles and were enumerated. Mite groups were basically identified up to suborders based on Walter and Krantz [ 11 ], except for Iolinidae (Prostigmatina), Tarsonemidae (Heterostigmatina) families, Pygmephoroidea (Heterostigmatina) superfamily and Oribatida species. The high density of these families justified putting them in separate groups. In analyses about mite groups, we used the following groups: order Mesostigmata (only cohort Gamasina), Oribatida suborder, cohort Astigmata, other suborder Prostigmata (without Iolinidae and mainly Eupodidae and Tydeoidae), suborder Endeostigmata (mainly Nanorchestidae), and finally family Iolinidae, family Tarsonemidae and superfamily Pygmephoroidea ( Fig 1 ). In addition, suborder Oribatida was identified at species level [ 44 ]. During the study, some specimens were treated with lactic acid and investigated with light microscope (Nikon Eclipse Ts2R). Reproduction mode and trophic guild of oribatid mites were determined by literature sources (e.g., [ 45 , 46 ]). Download: PNG larger image TIFF original image Fig 1. The identified mite groups. Soils at the study sites contained mites from four suborders. Based on their abundance and our taxonomic expertise, mites were identified at different taxonomic levels, as indicated by the circled groups. Gamasina and Astigmata were identified at the cohort level, Endeostigmata at the suborder level, and Oribatida at the species level. Prostigmata was divided into four groups because three of these groups occurred at particularly high densities during the experiment. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357403.g001 Microbial biomass was estimated by substrate-induced respiration (SIR) [ 43 , 47 – 49 ]. Chemical analyses Soil moisture was measured with Campbell Scientific device (HydroSense II Handheld Soil Moisture Sensor) in V/V%. For analysing soil chemical parameters (humus %, total N content, soil NO 3 - -N, soil NH 4 + -N) another 200 cm 3 soil samples were taken from each mesocosm. For soil chemistry analyses, soil total N content, humus %, soil ammonium (NH 4 + -N) and nitrate (NO 3 — N) contents were determined (see in [ 7 ]). For grass plant parameters, total plant biomass per mesocosm and total nitrogen content of plant tissue was measured. Steam distillation methods [ 50 , 51 ] were used to determine soil ammonium and nitrate contents and the total nitrogen content of soil samples. Soil humus content (%) was determined using the Tyurin method [ 52 ]. As humus % and SIR values showed little variation within the soil types and years, these parameters were only measured in 2021 and 2022. Statistical analyses The taxonomic resolution varies across mite groups in this study, as some taxa were identified to suborder, others to family, and oribatid mites to species level. This inconsistency precludes a unified community analysis at the species level, which represents a limitation of the present study. Consequently, analyses were conducted separately for higher-level mite groups and oribatid mite species, in order to minimise potential confusion arising from the mixed taxonomic resol
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