Restoring Arthropod Communities in Coastal Sage Scrub

Abstract

Coastal sage scrub in California and northern Baja California has been severely affected by urban expansion and is, in places, badly in need of restoration. We measured arthropod abundance and diversity on one of its primary components, the native shrub Artemisia californica ( Asteraceae; California sage ), to evaluate whether arthropod communities had become reestablished after a restoration attempt. Arthropods were collected from shrubs on planted and undisturbed sites 6 years after a restoration attempt. Fifty‐seven families and 146 adult morphospecies were found. Family and species richness were greater on planted shrubs, but arthropod diversity, once differences in species' abundances were corrected for, was greater on naturally established plants. Common arthropods occurred at similar densities regardless of planting history. The proportion of single occurrences of a species, in contrast, was significantly greater on naturally established shrubs. Planted shrubs supported more predators relative to herbivores than did naturally established shrubs. Planted shrubs were still distinguishable from naturally established ones in that they were both more isolated from neighboring shrubs and surrounded by more invasive weeds. We suggest that small‐scale restoration attempts can be successful at restoring basic elements of surrounding biodiversity. They do create a different community, however, both taxonomically and functionally, and are at least initially less able to support rare species.

Species richness and complementarity of beetle faunas in a mediterranean-type biodiversity hotspot

“…Nearly half the species from each site are represented by singletons or doubletons, and collectively one-third of all the species sampled were singletons or doubletons. Such patterns are both common and persistent in arthropod inventories (Colwell and Coddington 1994;Fisher 1999;Anderson and Ashe 2000;Novotný and Basset 2000;Burger et al 2003;Scharff et al 2003), even in the face of very intensive sampling. This may partly be an indication of true rarity (Martikainen and Kouki 2003), but is also understood to result from the intersecting vagaries of trapping methods with species-specific activity patterns (Basset et al 1997;Novotný and Basset 2000).…”

Ant diversity and bio-indicators in land management of lac insect agroecosystem in Southwestern China

“…All sampling at all plots was conducted semimonthly from June 2006 to May 2007 for a total of, 24 times. Specimens collected along each transect were pooled, and where possible identified to species-level based on keys found in (Xu 2002;Wu and Wang 1995), otherwise to morphospecies (Oliver and Beattie 1993;Burger et al 2003;Schnell et al 2003). …”

Landscape vs. Local Habitat Scale Influences to Insect Communities From Tallgrass Prairie Remnants

“…Insects dominate terrestrial ecosystems worldwide (Pyle 1981, Fisher 1998, such that their diversity and abundance makes them an ideal model for investigating habitat fragmentation and modification (Kremen et al 1993, Panzer and Schwartz 1998, Allan et al 2003, Collinge et al 2003, and thus they are often used as indicators of fragment restoration success (Burger et al 2003). Habitat fragmentation is known to affect arthropods differently depending upon the feeding guild they are associated with and whether they specialize on few host species or can utilize many food sources (Jonsen and Fahrig 1997, Golden and Crist 1999, Kruess and Tscharntke 2000, Davies et al 2001.…”