Chinese Bioscience 39(1): 52-59 (1996)
A preliminary study of earthworms in Fushan Botanical Garden
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Jiun-Hong Chen and Hsi-Te Shih
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In the period of the past two years, we used several methods including digging, random pick-up, and food attracting to collect earthworms in Fushan botanical garden, a national reservation forest in northern Taiwan. Totally, ten species were collected in which all belong to the same genus, Pheretima (Family Megascolecid). However, due to our information and competence for earthworm classification are below the required, only 6 species, so far, were well identified. In addition to one species, P. diffringens, the distribution of each species is narrow. Since the distance between each collection site are not too far away, this separation could be affected by human activities such as the transplantation of plants, the using of fertilizers, etc. It needs more studies to unravel the supposition. On the other hand, the population- density of earthworms in Fushan area is surprisingly low. Since, the pH of the soil in Fushan area is acidic, it might be the limiting factor to restrict the distribution of those earthworms.
Keywords: earthworm, Pheretima, Fushan.