Species Richness Patterns of New World Desert Grasshoppers in Relation to Plant Diversity

Otte, Daniel

doi:10.2307/3038010

Cited by 46 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…More homogeneous substrata had lower diversity and greater dominance by a single taxon. This importance of physical substrata composition is similar to what has been documented for other aquatic (Gorman and Karr 1978;Townsend et al 1997;Palmer et al 2000) and terrestrial organisms (MacArthur and MacArthur 1961;Rosenzweig and Winakur 1969;Otte 1976). We feel that percent EH is meaningful for describing patterns associated with MH sampling, but we also acknowledge that the percent EH is a very simplified measure of habitat and is a measure that inextricably interacts with other biotic and abiotic variables.…”

Section: Impacts To Diatom Diversitysupporting

confidence: 82%

Contributions of habitat sampling and alkalinity to diatom diversity and distributional patterns in streams: implications for conservation

Smucker

Vis

2010

Biodivers Conserv

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Diatoms, microscopic unicellular algae, have been widely sampled from streams around the world because of their use in biological assessments, but as a result they are often only collected from epilithic habitats in riffles, which may lead to a substantial underreporting of their diversity and distributional patterns. The goals of this study were to identify how sampling methods and water chemistry affect the characterization of local and regional diversity and distributions. Species richness, Shannon diversity, and evenness were significantly greater in multiple habitat (MH) than epilithic habitat (EH) samples (paired t-test; P \ 0.01). At the local scale, MH sampling yielded 76% of the total species collected (42% unique), EH sampling captured 58% (24% unique), and 34% were shared. From MH samples, 3, 28, and 60 regionally rare species were collected from[75,[50, and [25% of sites, respectively, whereas 1, 14, and 34 were collected from EH samples, respectively. Regional abundance more strongly predicted site frequency than mean local abundance. Smaller drainage basins tended to have fewer species, likely because of species-area relationships, but local factors (% EH and alkalinity) influenced the taxonomic complexity of assemblages. Diversity was greatest at intermediate % EH, but low alkalinity reduced diversity, which is potentially important for ecosystems affected by anthropogenic acidification, as in our study. Multiple habitats need to be sampled for better documenting diatom diversity and distributions, which could improve conservation efforts at local and regional scales along with the characterization of ecological patterns and processes.

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Section: Impacts To Diatom Diversitysupporting

confidence: 82%

Contributions of habitat sampling and alkalinity to diatom diversity and distributional patterns in streams: implications for conservation

Smucker

Vis

2010

Biodivers Conserv

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“…1, 2), we investigated a potential exemplar component of niche diVerentiation. Previous studies suggest that host-plant abundances are important environmental variables for grasshopper communities (Otte 1976;Joern 1979;Torrusio et al 2002). Accordingly, we examined the preferences of three common grasshopper species for two dominant grasses and related these preferences to occurrence and abundance in the Weld.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To quantitatively evaluate whether the distance and elevation gradients provided an appropriate contrast for testing decay of grasshopper community similarity, we examined, for both gradient types, the correlations between distance and key environmental variables known to be important for grasshoppers: total plant cover (Anderson et al 1979), total forb cover (Otte 1976;Joern 1979;Torrusio et al 2002), Bouteloua gracilis cover and Bouteloua eriopoda cover (present study), shrub cover (see below), and proportion of rock (diameter¸2 cm) in exposed soil (Isely 1938).…”

Section: Correlation Between Environmental Variation and Geographic Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relative contributions of neutral and niche-based processes to the structure of a desert grassland grasshopper community

2009

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Whether neutral or deterministic factors structure biotic communities remains an open question in community ecology. We studied the spatial structure of a desert grassland grasshopper community and tested predictions for species sorting based on niche differentiation (deterministic) and dispersal limitation (neutral). We contrasted the change in species relative abundance and community similarity along an elevation gradient (i.e., environmental gradient) against community change across a relatively homogeneous distance gradient. We found a significant decrease in pairwise community similarity along both elevation and distance gradients, indicating that dispersal limitation plays a role in structuring local grasshopper communities. However, the distance decay of similarity was significantly stronger across the elevational gradient, indicating that niche-based processes are important as well. To further investigate mechanisms underlying niche differentiation, we experimentally quantified the dietary preferences of two common species, Psoloessa texana and Psoloessa delicatula, for the grasses Bouteloua eriopoda and Bouteloua gracilis, which are the dominant plants (~75% of total cover) in our study area. Cover of the preferred host plant explained some of the variation in relative abundances of the two focal species, although much variance in local Psoloessa distribution remained unexplained. Our results, the first to examine these hypotheses in arid ecosystems, indicate that the composition of local communities can be influenced by both probabilistic processes and mechanisms based in the natural histories of organisms.

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“…Previous studies conducted on a variety of scales also revealed that grasshopper species richness is probably not a simple line function of the number of plant species. In a study of New World deserts and arid grasslands, Otte (1976) found that plant and grasshopper species richness was correlated with in but not between regions. On a smaller scale, in the tall grass prairie of Kansas, USA, Evans (1992) reported a positive correlation between plant and grasshopper species richness but concluded that the nature of the linkage was not clear.…”

Section: Correlations Between Plant and Grasshopper Species Richnessmentioning

confidence: 98%

Landscape level patterns of grasshopper communities in Inner Mongolia: interactive effects of livestock grazing and a precipitation gradient

et al. 2015

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Context Grasshoppers are a dominant herbivore assemblage globally and play an important role for ecosystem nutrient cycling. Yet, we lack a strong understanding of the relationship between grasshopper diversity and plant community composition at the landscape scale. Objective Our aim was to test landscape scale relationships between plant and grasshopper communities. Methods We used a large-scale, replicated experiment at four sites, including grazed and protected pastures across a 350 km transect and 200-400 mm precipitation gradient in the steppes of Inner Mongolia, China. We analyzed the relationships between plant and grasshopper parameters with ANOVAs and CCA. ResultsWe collected 17 grasshopper species and 15,000? individuals. The desert steppe (lowest precipitation) had the lowest grasshopper richness and diversity, but abundance was not different from the other sites. In two dry sites (desert steppe and Stipa steppe), livestock grazing decreased grasshopper diversity and increased abundance of the main pest species. In contrast, at the highest precipitation site (meadow steppe), grasshopper communities did not differ between grazing levels. Across all sites and grazing intensities, grasshopper abundance tended to be lowest and diversity highest in plant communities with intermediate levels of biomass and plant species richness. Conclusion These results support the concept that appropriate land use management practices would be beneficial for increasing biodiversity, promoting grassland sustainability, and reducing outbreaks of the dominant pest grasshopper in Inner Mongolia. Our study suggests that different management approaches Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (are necessary depending on the average annual precipitation and that the driest sites are most vulnerable to disturbance.

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Species Richness Patterns of New World Desert Grasshoppers in Relation to Plant Diversity

Cited by 46 publications

References 23 publications

Contributions of habitat sampling and alkalinity to diatom diversity and distributional patterns in streams: implications for conservation

Contributions of habitat sampling and alkalinity to diatom diversity and distributional patterns in streams: implications for conservation

Relative contributions of neutral and niche-based processes to the structure of a desert grassland grasshopper community

Landscape level patterns of grasshopper communities in Inner Mongolia: interactive effects of livestock grazing and a precipitation gradient

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