Gongga Mountain, the third highest mountain in China with an altitude up to 7556 m, is located in the middle of Hengduan Mountains. In general, annual temperature is around 4 ℃ and annual precipitation is around 1900 mm in this region. Moreover, with every 100 m increasing in altitude, temperature decreases about 0.67 ℃ and precipitation increases about 68 mm. The changes in temperature, precipitation and other environmental factors, with elevation might have shaped the varied vegetation types at different altitudes in Gongga Mountain. Temperature and precipitation are also usually considered as the determinant environmental factors for the diversity and abundance of soil fauna. At present, few studies on such vertical distributions of soil fauna were reported, especially in China. Therefore, this study aimed to: (1) examine whether soil fauna communities shift along the elevation gradient in the Gongga Mountain; if occur, (2) whether the shift(s) is (are) due to the changes in temperature and/or precipitation along the elevation gradient. In this study, four vegetation types, including evergreen broadleaved forest (EBF, at an altitude of 1930 m), deciduous broadleaved forest (DBF, 2343 m), coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest (CBF, 2780 m) and dark coniferous forest (DCF, 3160 m), were selected along the altitude gradient on the eastern slope of Gongga Mountain. Soil fauna in these forests were investigated in spring (May), summer (July) and autumn (October) in 2012. In total, 347 individuals of soil fauna, belonging to 10 classes, 29 orders and 68 phyla, were collected. Averaged density of soil fauna community was 19.28 ind./m² in the study forests, with Spirobolus as the dominant genus (24.21% of the total individuals) and detritivore and omnivore fauna as the major functional groups (64.26% and 16.28% of the total community biomass, respectively). Both the abundance and diversity of soil fauna showed a trend of decrease with increasing altitude, with significant differences in the density, richness and Shannon-Wiener index of the soil fauna community. The biomass of detritivore and omnivore fauna also revealed a trend of decrease with increasing altitude, with significant difference in the biomass of detritivore fauna. The abundance and diversity of soil fauna differed significantly between the DBF and the CBF throughout the three sampling times. Pearson correlation analysis showed that soil temperature was significantly and positively correlated with the Shannon-Wiener index, richness, biomass and density of the soil fauna communities, and the same results were also founded to the biomass of herbivore and omnivore fauna. In contrast, soil moisture was not significantly correlated to any selected parameter of soil fauna. Based on these results, we concluded that soil fauna community significantly shifted along the altitude gradient on the eastern slope of Gongga Mountain and the shifts were mainly resulted from the change in soil temperature with elevation.