A University of Oklahoma-led study shows that grasshopper numbers have declined over 30% in a Kansas grassland preserve over the past two decades.
A University of Oklahoma-led study shows that grasshopper numbers have declined over 30% in a Kansas grassland preserve over the past two decades. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the paper, “Nutrient dilution and climate cycles underlie declines in a dominant herbivore,” reveals a new potent and potentially widespread threat to Earth’s plant feeders: the dilution of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and sodium in the plants themselves due to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2.
Ellen Welti, of the Geographical Ecology Group in the Department of Biology at OU, led the collaboration of ecologists from OU, the University of Illinois and Kansas State University in this National Science Foundation-funded study.
Grasshoppers are abundant consumers in grasslands – a habitat that covers more than 30% of Earth’s land mass and is the source of the majority of human crops. The same decline in plant quality revealed by Welti and her colleagues has recently raised alarms about the global human food supply.
“This decline in plant nutrient concentration poses a challenge for all animals that consume plants, including humans,” Welti said.
Read more at University of Oklahoma
Photo credit: DomAlberts via Pixabay
