• Fig. 1. Household waste on the soil surface: A – deciduous forest in the vicinity of Stupino (Moscow region) (photo by A. A. Karabanova); Б – large lawn of Lomonosov Moscow State University (photo by D.D. Vinogradov); В, Г – Altai Republic (photo by V. D. Migunova)
  • Fig. 2. Experimental sites at three biological stations of Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences
  • Fig. 3. Fragments of polyethylene film placed at the experimental sites: А, Б – change in the appearance of the soil cover under the plastic film compared to unaffected areas; В, Г, Д – interception of litter with plastic sheets; E – condensation under the surface of the transparent film
  • Fig. 4. Soil moisture (% wet weight) under plastic film and control. The figure shows the means and errors of the mean (SE). Different letters indicate statistically significant differences within the biotope (Kruskal-Walles test and Dunn’s pairwise comparison)
  • Fig. 6. Number of main taxonomic groups of soil mesofauna (average ± SE) in different experimental variants (K – control, ПП – transparent plastic, ЧП – black plastic). Different letters indicate statistically significant differences within a biotope (Kruskal–Wallis test and Dunn’s pairwise comparison corrected for Benjamin–Hochberg multiple comparisons)
  • Fig. 7. Number of taxa identified using the morphological method of identifying and metabarcoding for different taxonomic levels (Venn diagrams): A – orders; Б – families; B – genera; Г – species. Numbers show number of families, genera and species identified within orders
  • Fig. 8. Nonparametric multidimensional scaling (NMDS), carried out using the Jaccard similarity index for different data sets: A – results of morphological determination; Б – identification results according to the BOLD database; B – exact variants of amplicon sequences (VAS). Ellipses represent the 95 % probability of finding points within their boundaries. For clarity, each graph is divided into 4 panels corresponding to different biotopes
  • Fig. 9. Results of discriminant analysis, all sites combined: A – results of morphological determination; Б – sequences identified according to the BOLD database; B – exact variants of amplicon sequences. Different experimental options are marked in color, and the positions of their centroids are shown in symbols. Ellipses represent the 95 % probability of finding points. The second discriminant function was not statistically significantand is presented for visualization purposes only. The first discriminant function was statistically significant (p < 0,05) only when using the morphological definition (A)
  • Fig. 10. Spearman correlation between discriminant functions, explaining the largest share of variance using each of the three approaches (see text). Top row – correlations were calculated for the entire data sample. Bottom row – correlations based on average values for each experimental variant in each biotope under study. The shape of the symbols indicates the type of biotope, the color indicates the type of impact
  • Fig. 11. Number of main taxonomic groups of soil macrofauna (average ± SE) in different versions of the experiment (K – control, ПП – transparent plastic, ЧП – black plastic). Different letters indicate statistically significant differences within the biotope (Kruskal test – Wallis and Dunn pairwise comparisons corrected for Benjamin–Hochberg multiple comparisons)