Soil nematodes inhabiting an original dry meadow and an abandoned vineyard in the National Park Seewinkel, Eastern Austria

Nematode communities of cultivated vineyards showed characteristics typical for cultivated ecosystems, e.g. predominance of plant parasitic nematodes followed by bacterivores. The abandoned vineyard showed a reverse trophic structure: bacterivorous nematodes with short life cycles (cp 2) predominated and the population of plant parasites was small. The nematode trophic structure of the dry meadow was similar to the abandoned vineyard. Nevertheless, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed that differences in nematode communities were still detectable at the generic level, with some genera occurring solely in one or the other site (e.g. Xiphinema). Thus, soil nematodes indicated a recovery of primary production and decomposition processes in the formerly cultivated vineyard soil, because plant parasites consuming plant tissues decreased, and organic matter breakdown was slower, as in low-input grasslands. Communities of soil nematodes were also compared with intensively cultivated vineyards previously surveyed in Eastern Austria.