ABSTRACT
A great variety of arthropods inhabit the semiarid soils of the grama-buffalo grass prairies. One approach to dealing with this variety has been to divide soil arthropods into faunal size classes. Soil arthropods are cryptic in their habits, they are difficult to observe and to sample. In grasslands, most previous workers have relied on behavioral extraction techniques developed for mesic forest biome soils that are not efficient for dryland faunas. This chapter describes some of the important taxa of soil arthropods found in the shortgrass steppe. It reviews information on the abundance and trophic behavior of soil microarthropods in semiarid grasslands. The chapter suggests that soil microarthropods have long been recognized as being important mediators of decomposition and nutrient cycling, they are also directly impacting two other components of the shortgrass system: plants and nematodes. Many of the mycophagous microarthropods of semiarid grasslands have been shown to feed at several trophic levels.
