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Enhancing grasshopper (Orthoptera: Acrididae) communities in sown margin strips: the role of plant diversity and identity

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Abstract

Grasshoppers are important components of grassland invertebrate communities, particularly as nutrient recyclers and as prey for many bird species. Sown margin strips are key features of agri-environmental schemes in European agricultural landscapes and have been shown to benefit grasshoppers depending on the initial sown seed mixture. Understanding the mechanisms by which the sown mixture impacts grasshoppers in sown margin strips is the aim of our study. Here, we investigated plant–grasshopper interactions in sown margin strips and the respective effects of plant identity and diversity on grasshoppers. We surveyed plants and grasshoppers in 44 sown margin strips located in Western France which were initially established with three sowing mixtures dominated, respectively, by alfalfa, Festuca rubra and Lolium perenne and Festuca arundinacea. Grasshopper species contrasted in their response to plant diversity and to the abundance of sown and non-sown plant species. Some grasshopper species were positively correlated with the abundance of grass and especially of a single sown plant species, F. rubra. In contrast, other grasshopper species benefited from high plant diversity likely due to their high degree of polyphagy. At the community level, these contrasted responses were translated into a positive linear relationship between grass cover and grasshopper abundance and into a quadratic relationship between plant diversity and grasshopper diversity or abundance. Since plant identity and diversity are driven by the initial sown mixture, our study suggests that by optimizing the seed mixture, it is possible to manage grasshopper diversity or abundance in sown margin strips.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Girardello for his useful comments on the manuscript and Eduardo Tedesco and Alexander Coles for English revisions. We thank the farmers of the study site for allowing us to perform surveys on their sown margin strips. This study was funded by the ANR-ECOGER and by ANR-BIODIVERSITE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR7372, Station d’Ecologie de Chizé-La Rochelle, CNRS–Université de La Rochelle, Villiers en Bois, 79360, Beauvoir sur Niort, France

    I. Badenhausser & N. Gross

  2. USC1339, Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, INRA, Villiers en Bois, 79360, Beauvoir sur Niort, France

    I. Badenhausser & N. Gross

  3. LTER, ZA Plaine & Val de Sèvre, CNRS, 79360, Villiers en Bois, France

    I. Badenhausser & N. Gross

  4. UMR1347 Agroécologie, INRA, 17, rue Sully, BP 86510, 21065, Dijon Cedex, France

    S. Cordeau

  5. FERLUS, INRA, Les Verrines, 86600, Lusignan, France

    L. Bruneteau

  6. URP3F, INRA, Le Chêne, RD150, CS 80006, 86600, Lusignan, France

    M. Vandier

Authors
  1. I. Badenhausser
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  2. N. Gross
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  3. S. Cordeau
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  4. L. Bruneteau
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  5. M. Vandier
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Correspondence to I. Badenhausser.

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Handling Editor: Heikki Hokkanen.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Co-occurrences analysis between sown and weed plant species

See Fig. 3.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Principal component analysis (PCA) on the sown strip/plant species cover index matrix

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Eleven weed species dominated weed communities: Elytrigia repens L. (ELREP), Arrhenatherum elatius L. (ARREL), Cirsium arvense L. (CIRAR), Concolvulus arvensis L. (CONAR), Daucus carota L. (DAUCA), Picris echioides L. (PICEC), Picris hieracioides L. (PICHI), Plantago lanceolata L. (PLALA), Sonchus asper L. (SONAS), Taraxacum officinale Weber (TAROF), Verbena officinalis L. (VEROF). Co-occurrence between sown and weed species was observed for D. glomerata with E. repens, D. carota, P. hieracioides, for F. arundinacea with C. arvense and S. asper and for M. sativa with T. officinale (Figs. 1, 3). At the opposite end, P. echioides was not present in sown margin strips where F. pratense was abundant (Figs. 1, 3). The same trend was observed for T. officinale which was not observed when F. rubra or L. perenne dominated in sown margin strips and for V. officinale when L. perenne was abundant (Figs. 1, 3).

Appendix 2: Effect of sown seed mixture on plant community

See Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Predicted mean (±SE) of grass cover index (a) and legume cover index (b), plant Shannon index (c), plant species richness in 2009 (d), in sown strips established using three types of sown mixture [GFa: mixture dominated by F. arundinacea (n = 40), GFrLp: mixture dominated by F. rubra and L. perenne (n = 40), GL: mixture with equal proportion of legumes and grasses (n = 8)]. Bars in white are sown plant species, and bars in gray are weed species

Full size image

Total grass cover index was higher when margin strips were sown with mixtures containing F. rubra and L. perenne (GFrLp) or dominated by F. arundinacea (GFa) than with grass–legume mixture (GL) (Fig. 4a) (sown mixture effect: P < 0.001). Legume almost had no cover in sown margin strips sown with GFa, compared to those sown with GFrLp and to GL mixture (Fig. 4b) (sown mixture effect: P < 0.001). Forb cover index did not differ between margin strips sown with the three types of mixtures (sown mixture effect: P = 0.11). GL mixture resulted in higher plant diversity compared to the other mixtures (Fig. 4c) (sown mixture effect: P = 0.04). Plant species richness in 2009 was the highest in sown margin strips established with the GL mixture (Fig. 4d) (year effect: P < 0.001; sown mixture effect: P = 0.13; interaction term: P = 0.004).

Appendix 3

See Table 4.

Table 4 Effect of plant communities on grasshopper species-specific abundances in sown margin strips in 2008 and 2009
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Badenhausser, I., Gross, N., Cordeau, S. et al. Enhancing grasshopper (Orthoptera: Acrididae) communities in sown margin strips: the role of plant diversity and identity. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 9, 333–346 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-015-9376-x

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