The more plant species live in grasslands and forests, the more insect species find a habitat there.
The more plant species live in grasslands and forests, the more insect species find a habitat there. However, the presence of more plant species does not only increase the number of insect species, but also the number of insect individuals. Simultaneously, animal diversity is not only determined by plant diversity, but also by the physical structure of the plant communities. These are the results of an international collaboration led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), published in the journal Nature Communications. These results have consequences for the insect-friendly management of grasslands and forests.
“Our results make it clear that developments such as the currently observed insect decline can be linked to the way in which we humans manage the ecosystems we use,” says lead author Prof Andreas Schuldt from the University of Göttingen, previously with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Together with his co-authors, Schuldt evaluated extensive data on plant and insect diversity from two of the world’s largest biodiversity experiments: the Jena Experiment and BEF-China. In the first experiment, the number of plant species in a grassland was altered and in the second, the number of tree species in a forest. Both experiments were designed to investigate the effects of plant diversity on other organisms and the functioning of the respective ecosystem.
Read more at German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
Image: In the BEF-China experiment, tree species richness varies across different subplots. (Credit: Helge Bruelheide)
