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Influence of landscape structure and land use on Merodon and Cheilosia (Diptera: Syrphidae): contrasting responses of two genera

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Abstract

Recent advances in landscape ecology have revealed the importance of landscape structure on insect species diversity and composition. We investigated how landscape structure and land use influence species compositions of Cheilosia and Merodon (Diptera: Syrphidae); two phytophagus genera of hoverflies. Our study shows that Shannon’s Diversity Index, Connectance Index, Grazing Intensity, Mean Fractal Dimension Index and Percentage of Agricultural Patches explained 38.6% of the variance in species composition at a 2 km scale, with the total ordination being significant (P = 0.04, Monte Carlo test, 499 permutations). Merodon and Cheilosia species differ in their responses to land-use change and connectivity, with the latter genus being positively correlated with connectivity and negatively correlated with all other variables. We conclude that connectivity is the primary factor affecting Cheilosia, while most Merodon species demonstrated greater resistance to changes in human-modified ecosystems. Our results suggest that different management efforts, focused on land-use intensity (grazing) or connectivity, seem to be appropriate when trying to conserve these taxa.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (Project III43002).

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  1. Department of Biology and Ecology, University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 2, 21000, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Snežana Jovičić, Zlata Markov, Snežana Radenković & Ante Vujić

  2. Department of Agricultural Sciences, AlmaMater Studiorum University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Giovanni Burgio & Irene Diti

  3. BioSense Institute, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Dušanka Krašić

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  1. Snežana Jovičić
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Jovičić, S., Burgio, G., Diti, I. et al. Influence of landscape structure and land use on Merodon and Cheilosia (Diptera: Syrphidae): contrasting responses of two genera. J Insect Conserv 21, 53–64 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-016-9951-1

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