Do They Ever Come Back? Responses of Leafhopper Communities to Extensification of Land Use

Nickel, Herbert; Achtziger, Roland

doi:10.1007/s10841-005-8824-9

Cited by 32 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Several studies show negative effects on species occurrence, community structure and diversity due to agricultural intensification or intensive management practices, e.g. mowing, grazing and fertilization (Morris 1981a;Prestidge 1982;Sedlacek et al 1988;Novotny´1991;Nickel and Hildebrandt 2003;Nickel and Achtziger 2005). In most cases, this operates through direct and indirect changes to the composition and structure of the vegetation (including loss of food plants) and associated micro-climatic conditions.…”

Section: Habitat Change and Land Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation of Grassland Leafhoppers: A Brief Review

et al. 2005

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The leafhoppers, planthoppers and their allies (collectively known as the Auchenorrhyncha) are presented as a group of insects that are highly appropriate for studying grassland ecology and conservation, evaluating the conservation status of sites and monitoring environmental and habitat change. Semi-natural grasslands typically support dense populations and a wide range of species with diverse ecological strategies. Their numerical dominance in many grasslands means that they have considerable functional significance, both as herbivores and as prey for higher trophic levels. Population and assemblage studies are supported by good ecological knowledge about most species and modern identification keys. Hitherto, most studies have focused on the composition and structure of assemblages and how they are affected by conservation management. However, grasslands support many rare species with small and fragmented populations which deserve conservation attention in their own right, and recent work has started to reflect this. The effects of management on the composition and structure of grassland leafhopper populations and assemblages are described and an assessment is given of the main threats facing individual species and overall diversity. There is a need to synthesise the scattered literature on grassland leafhoppers, to provide a model for how the composition and structure of populations and assemblages respond to major environmental and anthropogenic gradients across large biogeographic areas. Such an analysis could help predict the impact of likely future changes in land use and climate.

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Section: Habitat Change and Land Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation of Grassland Leafhoppers: A Brief Review

et al. 2005

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“…These findings and others (Hollier et al 2005) support our results showing the importance of overall plant community composition in explaining leafhopper communities. This concept is also supported by those that have demonstrated that the simplification of landscapes through agricultural practices has significant effects on leafhopper species occurrence, community structure, and diversity of leafhoppers (Morris 1981; Novotny 1991; Nickel & Hildebrandt 2003; Nickel & Achtziger 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

High Plant Richness in Prairie Reconstructions Support Diverse Leafhopper Communities

Rowe¹,

Holland²

2012

Restoration Ecology

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A primary reason for restoring plant communities is to increase biodiversity to previous levels. It is expected that restoring land with greater plant diversity will increase biodiversity at higher trophic levels, but high diversity seed mixes are expensive. In this study, we used one insect family, leafhoppers (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) to assess the difference in leafhopper communities that result from establishing high compared with low plant richness restorations. We tested the hypotheses that: (1) the added effort of a high richness restoration leads to measurable increases in both diversity and richness of leafhoppers; and (2) that leafhopper community composition is more similar to remnant prairies in high richness than in low plant richness restorations. We found that higher plant richness led to 3‐ to 7‐fold increases in leafhopper and prairie‐dependent leafhopper diversity and richness in restorations. Leafhopper communities in high richness restorations were not more similar to remnant prairies, rather they were distinct among high and low richness restorations and prairie interior. Leafhopper richness and diversity correlated with plant richness, and leafhopper community composition differed among plant community assemblages, but not with the occurrence of single plant species. For our sites, species‐rich restorations provided better quality habitat for leafhoppers that was comparable to remnant prairie. Our results suggest that restorations with high plant species richness better support animal food webs.

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“…Leafhoppers of the genus Aphrodes Curtis (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), are abundant, widely distributed over the Palearctic and also, as neozoa, in North America (Hamilton, ; Tishechkin, ; Nickel & Remane, ). They are important species in grassland leafhopper communities (Nickel & Achtziger, ) and they are also vectors of phytoplasmas that cause plant diseases (Lee et al , ; Weintraub & Beanland, ). The genus Aphrodes is considered a taxonomically challenging group and even trained experts often designate these leafhoppers merely to a nominal Aphrodes bicincta s.l.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The objective of the present paper is to provide a more comprehensive analysis of Aphrodes using multiple criteria (the iterative approach sensu Yeates et al , ) in order to provide the information needed for reliable species identification, which is clearly needed. Besides being included in molecular and morphological phylogenetic studies (Dietrich et al , ; Zahniser & Dietrich, , ), Aphrodes species are often collected in ecological studies due to their widespread distribution and abundance (Brown et al , ; Hollier et al , ; Jobin et al , ; Huusela‐Veistola & Vasarainen, ; Eyre et al , , ; Eyre, ; Fisher Barham & Stewart, ; Morris et al , ; Nickel & Achtziger, ; Strauss & Biedermann, , ; Kattwinkel et al , , ; Keathley & Potter, ; Körösi et al , ; Schuch et al , ) and some of them are even considered to be indicator species (Maczey et al , ; Trivellone et al , ). They have also been included as potential vectors in phytoplasma and mycoplasma transmission studies (Denes & Sinha, ; Carraro et al , ; Bressan et al , ; Riedle‐Bauer et al , ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating vibrational signals, mitochondrial DNA and morphology for species determination in the genus Aphrodes (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)

Bluemel

Derlink

Pavlovčič

et al. 2014

Systematic Entomology

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Reliable delimitation and identification of species is central not only to systematics, but also to studies of biodiversity, ecology and pest management. In the era of Internet‐based biodiversity databases misidentifications are rapidly disseminated and may have far‐reaching consequences. Leafhoppers from the genus Aphrodes (Hemiptera, Cicadellidae) are common and abundant, but, nevertheless, they are still a taxonomically challenging group whose members are often assessed in ecological studies and are also potential vectors of plant diseases. Previous study has shown that the syntype series for A. aestuarina (Edwards) includes also specimens of A. makarovi Zachvatkin and has suggested that misidentifications may be widespread in museum collections. We studied Aphrodes individuals collected from the U.K. and Slovenia in order to provide a more comprehensive analysis of this genus using multiple criteria. Combined work using male and female vibrational signals emitted during courtship, and a 600‐bp fragment within the barcoding region of the COI mtDNA gene, provided validated specimens that we also used for morphometric study. Analyses confirmed A. aestuarina, A. bicincta, A. diminuta and A. makarovi as behaviourally, genetically and morphologically distinct species. Although any of these approaches could be used alone to distinguish between species, combining morphological and molecular approaches will help to improve reliability, especially when identifying females. Morphological investigation of validated individuals from the U.K. and Slovenia also revealed geographic differences within species. By combining several body and aedeagus morphological characters males can be reliably identified, however, morphological differences between species are, nevertheless, relatively small. By contrast, observed genetic distances between Aphrodes species are relatively large (4.2–7.0%). At about half of our collecting sites more than one Aphrodes species was found and A. makarovi was collected together with every other species, including A. aestuarina on tidal saltmarshes. Due to low morphological variation between syntopic congeners it is likely that many museum specimens of Aphrodes have been assigned to the wrong species and species identification in ecological and vector studies may also be questionable.

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Do They Ever Come Back? Responses of Leafhopper Communities to Extensification of Land Use

Cited by 32 publications

References 38 publications

Conservation of Grassland Leafhoppers: A Brief Review

Conservation of Grassland Leafhoppers: A Brief Review

High Plant Richness in Prairie Reconstructions Support Diverse Leafhopper Communities

Integrating vibrational signals, mitochondrial DNA and morphology for species determination in the genus Aphrodes (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae)

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