High mountain meadows mesofauna for pastures rehabilitation

The aims of this work are to study a quantitative parity of dominant soil inhabitants in High-Mountainous pastures of the South Caucasus and to define inhabitants' roles in decomposition of plants. Species composition, horizontal and vertical distributions, seasonal dynamics were defined in soil layers by standard methods used in soil zoology. A role of soil invertebrate-saprophages was shown in plant litter destruction processes, in enhancement of biological cycle of high mountain ecosystems and in maintenance of soil natural fertility. Furthermore, the work presents a study of trophic structures and estimation of saprophages role in soil biota. The basic groups of high mountain meadows invertebrate-saprohages (millipedes, earthworms, caterpillars) were determined. The results showed that in trophic structures of animals' population soil saprophages made up 50-80 % and the basic stream of energy was directed through detrital food chains in a soil cycle.