THE RELATIONSHIP OF ESTONIAN EARTHWORMS TO LOCAL HABITAT AND SOIL FACTORS

The relationships between the nine most common earthworm species from Estonia to soil and vegetation factors were analysed by redundancy ana lysis. Two groups could be identified: one consists of the endogeic sp ecies Allolobophora caliginosa, A. chlorotica, A. rosea and Lumbricus rubellus of which A. chlorotica and A. rosea prefer habitats with high phytomass production; the other group contains Lumbricus castaneus an d Dendrobaena octaedra. In the latter group the earthworm communities are separated mainly by the influence of soil nitrogen and moisture co ntent. Diversity of earthworm communities was low on agriculturally ma naged land and was positively correlated to total soil nitrogen.