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Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies

Predation of invertebrate pest by natural enemies is a critical contribution of nature to people, because invertebrate pests cause a vast amount of economic damage and pesticides use has many long-term costs. Veteran trees are keystone structures and hotspots for biodiversity, and are a potential so...

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Autores principales: Wetherbee, Ross, Birkemoe, Tone, Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7595169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33116276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75723-0
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author Wetherbee, Ross
Birkemoe, Tone
Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne
author_facet Wetherbee, Ross
Birkemoe, Tone
Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne
author_sort Wetherbee, Ross
collection PubMed
description Predation of invertebrate pest by natural enemies is a critical contribution of nature to people, because invertebrate pests cause a vast amount of economic damage and pesticides use has many long-term costs. Veteran trees are keystone structures and hotspots for biodiversity, and are a potential source of natural enemies. To explore this, we used a balanced experimental design where we measured predatory beetle diversity and attack marks on three colors of artificial caterpillars placed around 20 veteran oaks and 20 nearby young oaks, in Southern Norway. We predicted that around the veteran oaks there would be a greater diversity of predatory beetles and more invertebrate attacks on artificial caterpillars. Sampling for predatory beetles was conducted in summer 2017 and 2018, and invertebrate attacks were measured in 2018. We found support for the predictions: diversity of predatory beetles was higher around veteran trees and there were more arthropod attack marks on artificial caterpillars placed around veteran trees. Our results indicated that veteran trees are a source of natural enemies. Valuing and protecting veteran trees and their communities is an essential step towards a more sustainable system of management that has the possibility of promoting both the wellbeing of people and biodiversity.
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spelling pubmed-75951692020-10-29 Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies Wetherbee, Ross Birkemoe, Tone Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne Sci Rep Article Predation of invertebrate pest by natural enemies is a critical contribution of nature to people, because invertebrate pests cause a vast amount of economic damage and pesticides use has many long-term costs. Veteran trees are keystone structures and hotspots for biodiversity, and are a potential source of natural enemies. To explore this, we used a balanced experimental design where we measured predatory beetle diversity and attack marks on three colors of artificial caterpillars placed around 20 veteran oaks and 20 nearby young oaks, in Southern Norway. We predicted that around the veteran oaks there would be a greater diversity of predatory beetles and more invertebrate attacks on artificial caterpillars. Sampling for predatory beetles was conducted in summer 2017 and 2018, and invertebrate attacks were measured in 2018. We found support for the predictions: diversity of predatory beetles was higher around veteran trees and there were more arthropod attack marks on artificial caterpillars placed around veteran trees. Our results indicated that veteran trees are a source of natural enemies. Valuing and protecting veteran trees and their communities is an essential step towards a more sustainable system of management that has the possibility of promoting both the wellbeing of people and biodiversity. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7595169/ /pubmed/33116276 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75723-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Wetherbee, Ross
Birkemoe, Tone
Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne
Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title_full Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title_fullStr Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title_full_unstemmed Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title_short Veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
title_sort veteran trees are a source of natural enemies
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7595169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33116276
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75723-0
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