Large moths captures by a pest monitoring system depend on farmland heterogeneity

Abstract

As intensive farmlands cover increasing areas of the world, associated biotic richness is crucial for the biodiversity of entire regions. Using data on non‐target Macrolepidopteran moths captured by a crop pest monitoring system, we compared local (100 m perimeter)‐ and landscape‐scale (1000 m perimeter) predictors of the numbers of moth individuals and moth species richness. During a single year (2009), eighteen light traps captured 91 726 individuals of 564 moths species. Typically for biotically impoverished habitats, the catches were dominated by a few superabundant species. Even in these impoverished assemblages, numbers of species increased with increasing herb and woody plants diversity (100 m around the traps), crop diversity (1000 m perimeter), landscape composition (1000 m) and configuration (100 and 1000 m). Abundance of the catches increased only with woody plants diversity in 100 m perimeters. In separate analyses of two species‐rich families, the presumably less mobile Geometridae increased with landscape configuration (i.e. density of edges) within 100 m perimeters around the traps, whereas the species richness of more mobile Noctuidae also reflected the landscape composition (i.e. proportional representation of land covers) at 100 m perimeters. Proportional representation of pest species decreased with increasing richness of herb and woody plants. Taken together, farmland heterogeneity increases moth species richness, whereas abundance of the catches mainly depends on local factors in the vicinity of light traps, and the local factors are more important for presumably less mobile Geometridae than for more mobile Noctuidae.

Inter‐individual variation in colour patterns in noctuid moths characterizes long‐distance dispersers and agricultural pests

“…In insects, mark-release-recapture experiments, laboratory tethered flight experiments, experimental releases in the field and expert evaluations have been used to estimate dispersal capacity (Burke et al, 2011;Jones, Lim, Bell, Hill, & Chapman, 2016;Kuussaari, Saarinen, Korpela, Pöyry, & Hyvönen, 2014;Nathan et al, 2008;Novotný, Zapletal, Kepka, Beneš, & Konvička, 2014;Stevens, Turlure, & Baguette, 2010;Summerville, Conoan, & Steichen, 2006). These approaches usually include a restricted number of species, are performed as laboratory experiments, at spatial scales involving local movements, or depend on the accuracy in the expert evaluation of species' dispersal capacity.…”

Agriculture and the Life Aquatic: Effects of Agricultural Landscape Structure on Farmland Aquatic Biodiversity and Water Quality

“…invertebrates (González-Estébanez et al, 2011;Mitchell et al, 2014;Fahrig et al, 2015), and plants (Gaba et al, 2010;Fahrig et al, 2015). Similarly, Flick et al (2012) found positive effects of patch density on butterfly species richness in agricultural landscapes, and Novotný et al (2015) found positive relationships between moth species richness and edge density in agricultural landscapes. Similar to our reasoning for anurans, Fahrig et al…”

“…Relationships between biodiversity and heterogeneity of the cropped area are currently not well understood. However, there is some evidence that increasing this component of farmland heterogeneity can benefit biodiversity Mitchell et al, 2014;Fahrig et al, 2015;Novotný et al, 2015). This suggests a potential conservation strategy to support farmland biodiversity without taking land out of crop production.…”

“…Heterogeneity of the cropped area of the landscape can be increased either by diversifying the crop types grown (higher compositional heterogeneity) or by growing them in a more complex spatial pattern (higher configurational heterogeneity) (Fahrig et al, 2011). Landscapes with higher crop diversity can support higher levels of biodiversity Novotný et al, 2015) because different crops can provide resources for different species (Westphal et al, 2003;Le Féon et al, 2010;Novotný et al, 2015). Fahrig et al (2015) found consistent, positive relationships between farmland configurational heterogeneity (measured as lower mean crop field size) and diversity of birds, plants, and five different arthropod groups in agricultural landscapes.…”

“…We hypothesized that both compositional and configurational heterogeneity of farmland should benefit anurans. A farmland with a high diversity of crop types should provide resources for different prey arthropod species (Westphal et al, 2003;Langellotto and Denno 2004;Le Féon et al, 2010;Novotný et al, 2015) at different times throughout the growing season, thus providing a more temporally stable prey resource for anurans than a farmland with low crop diversity. In addition, farmlands with smaller crop fields should contain more anurans, due to the benefits of field edges.…”