Abstract Earthworms are ecosystem engineers and are able to induce considerable changes in soil. These modifications go beyond physical and chemical aspects, as earthworms also act as regulators of communities of microorganisms and invertebrates. Although several studies have sought to clarify the effects of earthworms on soil nematode communities, the observed effects are highly variable, and there is no consensus on these interactions. In this work, fifteen studies representing 187 observations evaluating the impact of earthworms on soil nematode communities were synthesized in a meta-analysis. Our results showed that earthworms reduced soil nematode abundance by 27%. Nevertheless, this effect depends on the ecological category of earthworm and their densities, as well as experimental conditions. Anecic earthworms exhibited a greater capacity for modifying soil nematode communities than other ecological categories of earthworms. High earthworm densities also had stronger effects on soil nematodes than lower densities ( −2 ). However, we found that the presence of plants in experiments cancels out the negative effects of earthworms on soil nematodes, suggesting that earthworms did not affect nematode densities in these environments.

中文翻译：

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蚯蚓对土壤线虫的负面影响取决于蚯蚓密度、生态类别和实验条件

摘要 蚯蚓是生态系统工程师，能够引起土壤的显着变化。这些修改超出了物理和化学方面，因为蚯蚓还充当微生物和无脊椎动物群落的调节剂。尽管有几项研究试图阐明蚯蚓对土壤线虫群落的影响，但观察到的影响差异很大，并且对这些相互作用没有达成共识。在这项工作中，15 项研究代表了 187 项观察评估蚯蚓对土壤线虫群落的影响的荟萃分析。我们的结果表明，蚯蚓使土壤线虫丰度降低了 27%。然而，这种影响取决于蚯蚓的生态类别及其密度，以及实验条件。与其他生态类型的蚯蚓相比，无毛蚯蚓表现出更大的改变土壤线虫群落的能力。高蚯蚓密度对土壤线虫的影响也比低密度 ( -2 ) 更强。然而，我们发现实验中植物的存在抵消了蚯蚓对土壤线虫的负面影响，表明蚯蚓不会影响这些环境中的线虫密度。