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THE LEAVES OF ACER PLATANOIDES: POTENTIAL FOOD FOR EARTHWORM EISENIA FETIDA
Abstract
This study aimed to establish if the dried shredded leaves of Acer platanoides could represent an adequate food for earthworm Eisenia fetida (Savigny 1826) (red wiggler worm). The study was carried out in laboratory conditions and its aims were to determine the influence of this food on three biological parameters of earthworm Eisenia fetida (survival, weight, and prolificacy), and to reveal the changes appearing into the soil in the presence of this earthworm species, fed or not with shredded leaves of Acer platanoides, regarding the concentration of several parameters: the total nitrogen, available potassium, and available phosphorus. The results showed that the leaves of Acer platanoides could be an appropriate food for earthworms Eisenia fetida. This experiment showed that the leaves of Acer platanoides represent an adequate food for the earthworms Eisenia fetida because a low mortality was recorded (16,7% in controls, respectively 10% in the boxes with earthworms fed with dried shredded leaves of Acer platanoides, at the end of the experiment). The leaves of Acer platanoides represent an adequate food for the earthworms Eisenia fetida in order to increase the prolificacy of this species reared in microcosm conditions, to increase the pH of the adjacent soil toward alkaline domain, to increase the content in mobile phosphorus of the soil. The earthworms Eisenia fetida fed with dried leaves of Acer platanoides recorded statistically significant (p<0.01, p<0.05) positive correlations between the parameters body weight and prolificacy and the content of mobile phosphorous of the soil, and statistically significant (p<0.01) negative correlations between the parameters body weight and prolificacy and the content of mobile potassium of the soil. The achieved data have been statistical processed using Spearman and Kendall Correlations, the test One Way ANOVA, and Pearson Correlation (p<0.01, p<0.05).
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