Abstract:
Soil disturbances affects the community structures of soil organisms and the deterioration of
the soil environment can be evaluated by studying these changes. Many experimental results
have been published on the effects of heavy metals on the diversity of soil free living
nematodes. We used a meta-analysis to obtain comprehensive and multi-disciplinary
information on the use of soil free living nematodes as tools for assessing soil quality. Our aim
was to determine the effects of heavy metal pollution on the diversity of soil free living
nematodes and evaluate their suitability in soil health assessment. Free living nematodes are
found to respond quickly to environmental stress compared to higher organisms, as they have
intimate relations with their surroundings due to their high surface to volume ratio. In effect
the knowledge gained in relation to the effects of pollution on soil free living nematode
diversity, showed that species more sensitive to the toxic substances contained in the polluted
sites, can disappear while others which are more tolerant can dramatically increase. In fact,
many trace elements contained in the organic waste were reported to reduce the abundance and
diversity of soil free living nematode communities and influence the survival potential and the
rate of growth of more sensitive species. These were the results of comparatively small number
of field studies that tested the short term effects of low level contamination by heavy metals on
the soil health examined by analyzing soil nematode communities. However, our analyses on
the impacts of heavy metal contamination on soil free living nematode abundance have led to
inconsistent results and maturity index showed no relationship with heavy metal pollution. This
impacted our results and altered the expected outcome.
