Earthworm Biodiversity in an Arid Region of Rajasthan, India

Among the earth fauna, earthworms have an important role to mend smear texture. The soil texture plays an important role in wet holding capacity. Earthworms have an ability to enhance soil characteristics. It contributes to the breakdown of entire matter and release plant nutrients (Edwards and Bohlen, 1996). Earthworms atomic number 18 also considered as recyclable indicator of the health of soil ecosystem (Edwards and Bohlen, 1992) as to their role in soil foulness through fragmentation and mixed up the soil with mineral particle, enhancing microbial activity to breakdown plant organic matter.The contribution of earthworms in soil turnover, structure formation and serve as a fertility enhancer in unalike way. Earthworms are useful in estate of the realm improvement and organic waste management (Edwards and Baker, 1992 Lavelle and Martin, 1992 Johnson, 1997 Villenave et al. , 1999). The distribution and population assiduousness of various earthworm species have been corre lated with soil type and agribusiness land use (Haynes et al. , 2003 Sbrina et al. , 2009). The biodiversity of earthworms is influenced by physical, chemical and biological properties of soil and climatic conditions of habitats.Earthworms biodiversity is directly affected by soil characteristics (Edwards and Lofty, 1977). These community influencing factors are soil pH, organic matter, nitrogen, C/N ratio, soil moisture and soil texture. Biodiversity is counted as human resources (Heywood, 1996). Recently, many biologists studied the biodiversity and distribution of earthworms in the different parts of the world (Blakemore, 2000, 2002, 2003 Change and Chen, 2004,2005 Blakemore et al. ,2006 Sautter et al. , 2006 Ghafoor et al. , 2008).Present study was done in Bikaner district, which is determined in Thar desert of Rajasthan ranging 28. 01 N 73. 19 E. . The average rain go on in this area is 10 to 15 only. Therefore, climatic conditions are perverse for organisms. Most of its are a is irrigated with tube wells and Indira Gandhi canal. Due to adverse conditions from a long period, there is still a few information rough biodiversity and habitats. The present study will revealed new basic information for provided research on earthworms and its ecology and application of earthworms in agriculture sector.