Large manipulative experiments revealed variations of insect abundance and trophic levels in response to the cumulative effects of sheep grazing
Date
12/09/2017Author
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Abstract
Livestock grazing can affect insects by altering habitat quality; however, the effects of grazing years and intensities on insect abundance and trophic level during manipulative sheep grazing are not well understood. Therefore, we investigated these effects in a large manipulative experiment from 2014 to 2016 in the eastern Eurasian steppe, China. Insect abundance decreased as sheep grazing intensities increased, with a significant cumulative effect occurring during grazing years. The largest families, Acrididae and Cicadellidae, were susceptible to sheep grazing, but Formicidae was tolerant. Trophic primary and secondary consumer insects were negatively impacted by increased grazing intensities, while secondary consumers were limited by the decreased primary consumers. Poor vegetation conditions caused by heavy sheep grazing were detrimental to the existence of Acrididae, Cicadellidae, primary and secondary consumer insects, but were beneficial to Formicidae. This study revealed variations in insect abundance and trophic level in response to continuous sheep grazing in steppe grasslands. Overall, our results indicate that continuous years of heavy- and over- sheep grazing should be eliminated. Moreover, our findings highlight the importance of more flexible sheep grazing management and will be useful for developing guidelines to optimize livestock production while maintaining species diversity and ecosystem health.
Citation
Ma , J , Huang , X , Qin , X , Ding , Y , Hong , J , Du , G , Li , X , Gao , W , Zhang , Z , Wang , G , Wang , N & Zhang , Z 2017 , ' Large manipulative experiments revealed variations of insect abundance and trophic levels in response to the cumulative effects of sheep grazing ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 7 , 11297 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11891-w
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2045-2322Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 The Authors. 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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 31672485, the Earmarked Fund for China Agriculture Research System, CARS-34-07, and the Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.Collections
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