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Community Ecology

, Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 75–80 | Cite as

The influence of habitat heterogeneity on the fine-scale pattern of an Heteroptera assemblage in a sand grassland

  • A. TormaEmail author
  • L. Körmöczi
Article
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Abstract

The influence of elevation and vegetation characteristics on the spatial pattern of an epigeic true bug assemblage was investigated along a transect in a sandy grassland of Kiskunság. A 55 m long transect through wind grooves and dune tops, perpendicular to the vegetation borders was established. Both the moving split window technique and the ordination method revealed that dune top habitat has a distinct Heteroptera assemblage. This sand dune habitat was characterized by the most abundant Heteroptera species. We did not observe a distinct true bug assemblage in the wind groove habitat. Canonical correspondence analysis and multiple linear regressions showed that the relative altitude had a greater effect on the distribution of true bugs than vegetation cover and plant species richness.

Keywords

Epigeic true bugs Habitat transition Sand dune 

Abbreviations

CCA

Canonical Correspondence Analysis

MSW

Moving Split Window

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© Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 2008

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of EcologyUniversity of SzegedSzegedHungary

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