Livestock grazing disrupts plant-insect interactions on salt marshes
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985939%3A_____%2F18%3A00507417" target="_blank" >RIV/67985939:_____/18:00507417 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0298967" target="_blank" >http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0298967</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/icad.12251" target="_blank" >10.1111/icad.12251</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Livestock grazing disrupts plant-insect interactions on salt marshes
Original language description
Studies of grassland communities have demonstrated that increasing vertebrate grazing decreases the diversity of specialised herbivorous insects, while plant diversity is maintained or increased. However, we still have a limited understanding of the causal mechanisms underlying these contrasting observations of two tightly linked groups of organisms. We used spatially linked plant and moth observations from salt marshes, sampled for 3 years along an experimental sheep-grazing gradient (0, 1–2, 3–4 and 10 sheep ha−1), to test whether the disruption of plant–insect interactions by large herbivores accounts for these contrasting grazing effects. Moths were caught using emergence traps, which were moved and repositioned every 3 weeks. Firstly, we quantified species turnover between the grazing regimes for both taxa (measured as Sørensen dissimilarity) using a null-model approach. Secondly, we analysed the number of observed insect ̶ host associations under the different regimes. Species turnover between grazing regimes was significant (after correcting for rarefaction effects) for moth species, but not for plants, indicating very few and random effects of grazing on plant species composition. The percentage of realised plant–moth associations decreased from 37% in the absence of grazing to 6.5% under high stocking densities. We thus conclude that vertebrate grazing caused a disruption of plant–moth associations, probably by rendering the host-plants unsuitable for most of the moth species. Our findings provide further mechanistic understanding on how large herbivores shape arthropod communities and illustrate the importance of host-plant associations in explaining effects of natural or anthropogenic habitat modification.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
10618 - Ecology
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2018
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Insect Conservation and Diversity
ISSN
1752-458X
e-ISSN
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Volume of the periodical
11
Issue of the periodical within the volume
2
Country of publishing house
GB - UNITED KINGDOM
Number of pages
10
Pages from-to
152-161
UT code for WoS article
000426611600003
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85043341961