Evaluating butterflies as surrogates for birds and plants in semi-natural grassland buffers
| Autor: | Samuel K. Riffell, L. Wes Burger, Heidi L. Adams, Jolie G. Dollar |
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| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
geography
Ecosystem health geography.geographical_feature_category Ecology Agroforestry Biodiversity food and beverages Biology complex mixtures Grassland Abundance (ecology) Animal ecology Insect Science Forb natural sciences Animal Science and Zoology Ecosystem Species richness Nature and Landscape Conservation |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Insect Conservation. 18:171-178 |
| ISSN: | 1572-9753 1366-638X |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10841-014-9626-8 |
| Popis: | Semi-natural grasslands can support diverse faunal and floral communities, including grassland birds, beneficial insects, and native wildflowers. Monitoring biodiversity of this type of ecosystem is important to assess abundance and richness of grassland-associated species, evaluate success of establishing grasslands, and to assess overall ecosystem health. We tested butterflies as surrogates for birds and plants to assess establishment success of semi-natural grassland buffers in north-central Mississippi using Spearman rank correlation (Spearman’s ρ). Disturbance and grassland butterfly guilds were generally not suitable surrogates for grassland bird metrics, non-grassland bird metrics, or nest density metrics. Butterflies did have consistent positive correlations with plant species richness and forb metrics, as well as consistent negative correlations with grass metrics, but these correlations were generally smaller than what is considered suitable to serve as surrogates. In general, butterflies were not suitable surrogates for birds or plants in semi-natural grassland buffers. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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