Road verges are important secondary habitats for grassland arthropods
| Autor: | Hardeep Kaur, Jelena Šeat, Gábor Módra, Nikolett Gallé-Szpisjak, Gábor Lőrinczi, Attila Torma, Róbert Gallé |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Habitat fragmentation geography.geographical_feature_category Ecology Biodiversity Species diversity Generalist and specialist species 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Grassland 010602 entomology Geography Habitat Animal ecology Insect Science Animal Science and Zoology Species richness Nature and Landscape Conservation |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Insect Conservation. 23:899-907 |
| ISSN: | 1572-9753 1366-638X |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10841-019-00171-9 |
| Popis: | Semi-natural linear landscape elements such as road verges, hedgerows and field margins are important in maintaining the connectivity between habitat fragments of highly modified landscapes. Preservation of habitat specialist fauna requires conservation of the remaining natural habitat patches and connectivity of fragments. Our study focuses on the spider, ant and true bug fauna and functional diversity (FD) of fragmented forest steppe patches, moderately grazed pastures and road verges embedded in a matrix of forest plantations in Hungary, Central Europe. We established total 30 sampling sites, 10 in each, the grassland component of forest-steppes (F), pastures (P) and road verges (R) near pine forests. We collected arthropods with pitfall and sweep-net techniques. We calculated FD and species composition of arthropods using linear mixed models. We observed higher species richness in road verges for spiders and ants. We also found higher FD values for spiders and different trait composition for all taxa in road verges when compared with forest steppes and pastures. Species composition suggests that road verges do not serve as habitat for several forest-steppe and grassland species, in spite of the fact that numerous specialist species were found in the road verges. We show that forest steppes have higher species richness of spiders than pastures, and there are differences in species assemblage composition of the two habitat types for all taxa. Our results indicate that road verges should be considered as an important refuge for grassland specialist arthropods, as road verges provide secondary linear habitats for many arthropod species, and we would suggest the maintenance of these grassy strips in order to preserve arthropod biodiversity. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|
Full text from SpringerLink