Reducing Mowing Frequency Increases Floral Resource and Butterfly (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea and Papilionoidea) Abundance in Managed Roadside Margins

Halbritter, Dale A.; Daniels, Jaret C.; Whitaker, D. M.; Huang, Lei

doi:10.1653/024.098.0412

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Taking this knowledge into consideration, and within the ecological intensification framework (Table 1), restored or maintained semi-natural ecosystems, field border plantings and riparian buffer strips, can directly increase the complexity and connectivity of agricultural landscapes, often improving floral and nesting resources for pollinator diversity (Lagerl€ of et al 1992;Carvell et al 2004;Cole et al 2015;Baude et al 2016;Ponisio et al 2016). Optimising management of these semi-natural areas, such as by adjusting mowing frequency and rotation, can diversify flower and insect pollinator communities (Noordijk et al 2009;Halbritter et al 2015) across the landscape.…”

Section: Landscape Complexity and Connectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Worldwide, human appropriation of ecosystems is disrupting plant-pollinator communities and pollination function through habitat conversion and landscape homogenisation. Conversion to agriculture is destroying and degrading semi-natural ecosystems while conventional land-use intensification (e.g. industrial management of large-scale monocultures with high chemical inputs) homogenises landscape structure and quality. Together, these anthropogenic processes reduce the connectivity of populations and erode floral and nesting resources to undermine pollinator abundance and diversity, and ultimately pollination services. Ecological intensification of agriculture represents a strategic alternative to ameliorate these drivers of pollinator decline while supporting sustainable food production, by promoting biodiversity beneficial to agricultural production through management practices such as intercropping, crop rotations, farm-level diversification and reduced agrochemical use. We critically evaluate its potential to address and reverse the land use and management trends currently degrading pollinator communities and potentially causing widespread pollination deficits. We find that many of the practices that constitute ecological intensification can contribute to mitigating the drivers of pollinator decline. Our findings support ecological intensification as a solution to pollinator declines, and we discuss ways to promote it in agricultural policy and practice.

show abstract

Section: Landscape Complexity and Connectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rights-of-way may provide suitable pollinator habitat if managed in ways that promote and maintain host and nectar plants (Munguira and Thomas, 1992;Ries et al, 2001;Saarinen et al, 2005;Hopwood, 2008;Skorka et al, 2013;Halbritter et al, 2015), although concerns exist about dangers from roads (Munoz et al, 2015) including collisions (McKenna et al, 2001;Skorka et al, 2013;Keilson et al, 2018) and chemical runoff (Kaspari et al, 2010;Snell-Rood et al, 2014). A growing number of transportation agencies have implemented pollinator habitat programs (e.g., Iowa Living Roadway Trust Fund, Illinois DOT Monarch Program, Monarch Highway, Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative), and best management practices have been developed for pollinator habitat in roadside rightsof-way (Hopwood et al, 2015(Hopwood et al, , 2016a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid Assessment of Roadsides as Potential Habitat for Monarchs and Other Pollinators

Cariveau

Anderson²,

Hopwood

et al. 2019

Front. Ecol. Evol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…In these works, shorter periods between cuts, and thus higher cutting frequencies, had a negative impact on the abundance of butterflies (Halbritter et al. ) and hemipterans (Helden and Leather ). In our extensively managed meadows located on the Swiss lowland Plateau, which can be seen as representative for most western and central European countries, the timing of the first cut thus seems more important for insects than cutting frequency or time lapse between successive cuts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The time between cuts has, to our knowledge, only been researched under high cutting frequencies (e.g., Helden and Leather , Halbritter et al. ), so that time between cuts was collinear with cutting frequency. In these works, shorter periods between cuts, and thus higher cutting frequencies, had a negative impact on the abundance of butterflies (Halbritter et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Larval and phenological traits predict insect community response to mowing regime manipulations

Klink

Menz

Baur

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For the restoration of biodiversity in agricultural grasslands, it is essential to understand how management acts as an ecological filter on the resident species. Mowing constitutes such a filter: only species that possess functional traits enabling them to withstand its consequences can persist in the community. We investigated how the timing of mowing modulates this filtering effect for insects. We predicted that two traits drive species responses. Species with larval development within the meadow vegetation will suffer more from mowing than species whose larvae develop in or on the ground, or outside the meadows, while species with a later phenology should benefit from later mowing. We conducted a five‐year experiment, replicated at 12 sites across the Swiss lowlands, applying three different mowing regimes to low‐intensity hay meadows: (1) first cut of the year not earlier than 15 June (control regime); (2) the first cut delayed until 15 July; and (3) leaving an uncut grass refuge on 10–20% of the meadow area (after earliest first cut on 15 June). Before the first cut in years 4 or 5, we sampled larvae of Lepidoptera and sawflies, and adults of moths, parasitoid wasps, wild bees, hoverflies, ground beetles, and rove beetles. Overall, before the first cut of the year, abundances of species with vegetation‐dwelling larvae were higher in meadows with delayed mowing or an uncut grass refuge, with some taxon‐specific variation. In contrast, species whose larval development is independent of the meadow vegetation showed no differences in abundance between mowing regimes. Species richness did not differ among regimes. For species with vegetation‐dwelling larvae, a fourth‐corner analysis showed an association between early phenology and the control regime. No associations were found for the other functional groups. Our results show that slight modifications of mowing regimes, easily implementable in agri‐environmental policy schemes, can boost invertebrate abundance, potentially benefitting insectivorous vertebrates.

show abstract

Reducing Mowing Frequency Increases Floral Resource and Butterfly (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea and Papilionoidea) Abundance in Managed Roadside Margins

Cited by 22 publications

References 35 publications

Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination

Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination

Rapid Assessment of Roadsides as Potential Habitat for Monarchs and Other Pollinators

Larval and phenological traits predict insect community response to mowing regime manipulations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About