Abstract
Over the last 60 years changes to the management of species-rich mesotrophic grasslands have resulted in the large-scale loss and degradation of this habitat across Europe. Restoration of such grasslands on agriculturally improved pastures provides a potentially valuable approach to the conservation of these threatened areas. Over a four-year period a replicated block design was used to test the effects of seed addition (green hay spreading and brush harvest collection) and soil disturbance on the restoration of phytophagous beetle and plant communities. Patterns of increasing restoration success, particularly where hay spreading and soil disturbance were used in combination, were identified for the phytophagous beetles. In the case of the plants, however, initial differences in restoration success in response to these same treatments were not followed by subsequent temporal changes in plant community similarity to target mesotrophic grassland. It is possible that the long-term consequences of the management treatments would not be the establishment of beetle and plant communities characteristic of the targets for restoration. Restoration management to enhance plant establishment using hay spreading and soil disturbance techniques would, however, still increase community similarity in both taxa to that of species-rich mesotrophic grasslands, and so raise their conservation value.
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Acknowledgments
This project was funded by the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of project BD1441. We thank Keith Datchler of the Beech Estate for permission to use the experimental sites and his support and enthusiasm throughout the project, Chris and Roland Davis (Agrifactors Southern Ltd.) for assistance with installing the treatments, and Dawn Brickwood of the High Weald Meadows Initiative for continued support. Victoria Chapman, Tracy Gray, Katherine Robertson and Corin Wilkins assisted with sampling. Special thanks to Darren Mann, James Hogan and George McGavin at the Hope Entomological Collections, University Museum Oxford.
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Communicated by W. Weisser.
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Woodcock, B.A., Edwards, A.R., Lawson, C.S. et al. Contrasting success in the restoration of plant and phytophagous beetle assemblages of species-rich mesotrophic grasslands. Oecologia 154, 773–783 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-007-0872-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-007-0872-2