Earthworm Biodiversity in an Arid Region of Rajasthan, India

Among the filthiness fauna, earthworms have an important role to improve district texture. The stain texture plays an important role in water holding capacity. Earthworms have an ability to enhance soil characteristics. It contributes to the breakdown of organic matter and disengage plant nutrients (Edwards and Bohlen, 1996). Earthworms are also considered as useful indicator of the health of soil ecosystem (Edwards and Bohlen, 1992) as to their role in soil fertility through atomization 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 lot as a fertility enhancer in different way. Earthworms are useful in land improvement and organic waste management (Edwards and Baker, 1992 Lavelle and Martin, 1992 Johnson, 1997 Villenave et al. , 1999). The dissemination and population density of various earthworm species have been correlated with soil type and a griculture 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 located in Thar desert of Rajasthan ranging 28. 01 N 73. 19 E. . The average rain fall in this force field is 10 to 15 only. Therefore, climatic conditions are adverse for organisms. Most of its area is irrigated with tube we lls and Indira Gandhi canal. Due to adverse conditions from a long period, there is still a few information about biodiversity and habitats. The present study exit revealed new basic information for further research on earthworms and its ecology and application of earthworms in agriculture sector.