Pennycress double‐cropping does not negatively impact spider diversity
2015
Groeneveld, Janna H. | Lührs, Hans P. | Klein, Alexandra‐Maria
Pennycress has been suggested as an alternative feedstock for bioenergy. Especially, its cultivation in a double‐cropping system with corn appears to be promising for a sustainable production. As an aspect of its sustainability, we studied the effect of a pennycress‐corn double‐cropping system on spider diversity. We used a randomized block design with 60 pitfall traps to compare the system's spider diversity with that of three commonly applied corn rotations: mustard‐corn, green fallow‐corn and bare fallow‐corn. We sampled from 13 March to 26 June 2012, which included the corresponding cultivation changes to corn. The pennycress‐corn system harboured a higher spider species richness and diversity (Shannon index) than the other three systems, driven by web‐building spiders. Abundance only differed between the pennycress‐ and bare fallow‐corn system. However, separated into foraging guilds, hunting spiders were most abundant in the mustard‐corn system, whereas web‐building spiders were more abundant in the pennycress‐corn than in the mustard‐ and bare fallow‐corn system. The results obtained in the present study suggest that cultivation of pennycress as a biofuel feedstock in a double‐cropping system has positive (and not negative) effects on the spider diversity compared with other commonly used cultivation systems.
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