Abstract
Mountains harbour a disproportionate amount of biodiversity that is explained by both biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the ultimate factors that shape these gradients including the interaction between trophic levels is important to highlight management practices that may help maintain biodiversity. Here we report an experiment carried out in a Pyrenean valley where a transhumant cattle herd grazes every year subalpine grasslands in a 700 m altitudinal range (1300–2000 m). In 2018 we measured species richness and abundance of plants and two groups of herbivorous insects (butterflies and grasshoppers) in 20 plots, and then we established 10 exclusion plots to study the effect of grazing during 2019 and 2020. Our results show that there were differences among the relative weight of abiotic and biotic factors that shape biodiversity gradients. Overall, the elevation gradient strongly affected plant, butterfly and grasshopper richness, as well as insect abundances. Plant and butterfly richness’s were correlated via a cascading trophic effect while the slope played a very important role for grasshoppers. Livestock exclusion had a negative effect on plant richness through rapid growth of grass species but there were almost no changes in insect community composition after two years. The intra-annual effects of grazing showed early grazing to be positive for butterflies flying later during the season, as seen for a subset of plots within a narrow altitudinal range. In grazed plots, butterfly richness and abundance increased over the summer when the herd moved to alpine environments and exceeded those of non-grazed plots, indicating that a traditional transhumance management system can help sustain biodiversity in subalpine grasslands as a type of extensive grazing.
Implications for insect conservation.
Traditional grazing by transhumance systems allows grasslands maintenance in subalpine areas, which helps sustain butterfly and grasshopper populations.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Evarts family for giving us the opportunity to work in El Catllar valley and develop projects for studying conservation biodiversity, and Jordi Esquerda and Pete Gill who provided material and logistic support in the exclusion experiment. Also thanks are due to Joan and Carles, the herdsmen, for providing information about their management practices, to Dani Oro, who studied the herd and also provided information about the management practices, and to Jordi Zapata, who recorded and provided climatic data for the valley. Clàudia Pla-Narbona prepared Fig. 1.
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The experiment was funded privately by Apatura Serveis Ambientals S.L. (Apatura Environmental Services), owned by James Evarts.
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AU, CS and MG conceived the study and wrote the manuscript. AU made all the analyses. ML helped with the experiment design and fieldwork logistics. All the authors participated with the fieldwork.
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All the field identifications were performed without any insect sacrifices, and the experiment was carried in agreement with the cattle shepherd with no alteration of the traditional management of transhumance of the cattle herd.
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Ubach, A., Guardiola, M., Oliver, X. et al. Spatial gradients and grazing effects of a transhumant herd on plants and insect herbivores in Pyrenean subalpine grasslands. J Insect Conserv 27, 767–779 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-023-00496-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-023-00496-6