Low temperature and drought are the main environmental factors threatening the 
animals living in arctic area and cold temperate regions. To adapt the severe 
environment, the animals should adopt appropriate strategies. As a group of 
arthopods with freeze-avoiding strategy, soil springtails have the similar 
ecological mechanisms and modes of cold resistance/tolerance as insects, 
manifesting in the cold acclimation and drought tolerance to decrease the damage 
of ice crystal formation. During cold acclimation, there are a rapid increase of 
glycerol, a rapid decrease of fucose and glucose, and the production of 
anti-freeze proteins (AFP) , and exists the inter-transformation of different 
kinds of lipids to improve the flow of cell membrane to protect the cell from 
low temperature injury. In addition, soil springtails have their own specific 
modes and mechanisms to tolerate low temperature stress, mainly the vertical 
migration under the protection of snow cover and the excretion of ice nucleator 
from haemolymph, illustrating that it's of significance to research the 
cryobiology of soil springtails. This paper summarized the modes and mechanisms 
of soil springtails in tolerating low temperature environment, reviewed the 
research progress on the eco-physiology of the springtails, discussed the 
existing problems of the researches on the low temperature tolerance of the 
springtails, and prospected the research directions of the springtails low 
temperature ecology under the background of global change.