Which pitfall traps and sampling efforts should be used to evaluate the effects of cropping systems on the taxonomic and functional composition of arthropod communities?
2019
Gardarin, Antoine | Valantin-Morison, Muriel | Agronomie ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-AgroParisTech
International audience
Show more [+] Less [-]English. Ground dwelling arthropods are affected by agricultural practices, and analyses of their responses to different crop management are required. The sampling efficiency of pitfall traps has been widely studied in natural ecosystems. In arable agroecosystems, arthropod communities are more simplified than in natural ones and sampling techniques need to be adjusted to these specific conditions. In particular, the ability to distinguish between simplified communities and the sampling effort required have been little investigated. We evaluated the suitability of pitfall traps for characterizing the effects of arable cropping systems on the taxonomic and functional composition of spider and carabid communities. In a field experiment comparing three cropping systems, we compared the effects of two pitfall trap diameters, the type of preserving fluid used in pitfall traps and the sampling effort on six metrics describing communities: activity-density, richness and community weighted mean (CWM) of body size, each one for carabid and spiders. Trap size affected the observed composition of carabid and spider communities, with large traps yielding a higher relative proportion of spiders, and a higher species richness and CWM body size for both taxa. The type of preserving fluid had no marked effect on any of the metrics considered. For this experiment in arable crops, simulations with various sampling efforts showed that only very different communities could be significantly distinguished
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