Livestock grazing disrupts plant-insect interactions on salt marshes

Kód výsledku v 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>

Výsledek na webu

<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>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Livestock grazing disrupts plant-insect interactions on salt marshes

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

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.

Název v anglickém jazyce

Livestock grazing disrupts plant-insect interactions on salt marshes

Popis výsledku anglicky

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.

Druh

J_imp - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

10618 - Ecology

Projekt

—

Návaznosti

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Rok uplatnění

2018

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název periodika

Insect Conservation and Diversity

ISSN

1752-458X

e-ISSN

—

Svazek periodika

11

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

2

Stát vydavatele periodika

GB - Spojené království Velké Británie a Severního Irska

Počet stran výsledku

10

Strana od-do

152-161

Kód UT WoS článku

000426611600003

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85043341961