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Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs

Arthropod community composition in agricultural landscapes is dependent on habitat characteristics, such as plant composition, landscape homogeneity and the presence of key resources, which are usually absent in monocultures. Manipulating agroecosystems through the insertion of in-field floral resou...

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Autores principales: Haro, Marcelo Mendes, Silveira, Luís Cláudio Paterno, Wilby, Andrew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815608/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193045
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author Haro, Marcelo Mendes
Silveira, Luís Cláudio Paterno
Wilby, Andrew
author_facet Haro, Marcelo Mendes
Silveira, Luís Cláudio Paterno
Wilby, Andrew
author_sort Haro, Marcelo Mendes
collection PubMed
description Arthropod community composition in agricultural landscapes is dependent on habitat characteristics, such as plant composition, landscape homogeneity and the presence of key resources, which are usually absent in monocultures. Manipulating agroecosystems through the insertion of in-field floral resources is a useful technique to reduce the deleterious effects of habitat simplification. Food web analysis can clarify how the community reacts to the presence of floral resources which favour ecosystem services such as biological control of pest species. Here, we reported quantitative and qualitative alterations in arthropod food web complexity due to the presence of floral resources from the Mexican marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) in a field scale lettuce community network. The presence of marigold flowers in the field successfully increased richness, body size, and the numerical and biomass abundance of natural enemies in the lettuce arthropod community, which affected the number of links, vulnerability, generality, omnivory rate and food chain length in the community, which are key factors for the stability of relationships between species. Our results reinforce the notion that diversification through insertion of floral resources may assist in preventing pest outbreaks in agroecosystems. This community approach to arthropod interactions in agricultural landscapes can be used in the future to predict the effect of different management practices in the food web to contribute with a more sustainable management of arthropod pest species.
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spelling pubmed-58156082018-03-02 Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs Haro, Marcelo Mendes Silveira, Luís Cláudio Paterno Wilby, Andrew PLoS One Research Article Arthropod community composition in agricultural landscapes is dependent on habitat characteristics, such as plant composition, landscape homogeneity and the presence of key resources, which are usually absent in monocultures. Manipulating agroecosystems through the insertion of in-field floral resources is a useful technique to reduce the deleterious effects of habitat simplification. Food web analysis can clarify how the community reacts to the presence of floral resources which favour ecosystem services such as biological control of pest species. Here, we reported quantitative and qualitative alterations in arthropod food web complexity due to the presence of floral resources from the Mexican marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) in a field scale lettuce community network. The presence of marigold flowers in the field successfully increased richness, body size, and the numerical and biomass abundance of natural enemies in the lettuce arthropod community, which affected the number of links, vulnerability, generality, omnivory rate and food chain length in the community, which are key factors for the stability of relationships between species. Our results reinforce the notion that diversification through insertion of floral resources may assist in preventing pest outbreaks in agroecosystems. This community approach to arthropod interactions in agricultural landscapes can be used in the future to predict the effect of different management practices in the food web to contribute with a more sustainable management of arthropod pest species. Public Library of Science 2018-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5815608/ /pubmed/29451903 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193045 Text en © 2018 Haro et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Haro, Marcelo Mendes
Silveira, Luís Cláudio Paterno
Wilby, Andrew
Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title_full Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title_fullStr Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title_full_unstemmed Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title_short Stability lies in flowers: Plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
title_sort stability lies in flowers: plant diversification mediating shifts in arthropod food webs
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5815608/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193045
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