[MAIPC] FW: [Aliens-L] Biodiversity Drops In Areas Dominated By Non-Native Plants

[Marc Imlay]

Biodiversity Drops In Areas Dominated By Non-Native Plants

*
<http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/17175/20151001/habitat-change-biodi
versity-loss-non-native-plants.htm#disqus_thread> 0 Comments

*          

*         Text Size  <javascript:;> -  <javascript:;> +

*          <javascript:;> Print

*
<http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/17175/20151001/habitat-change-biodi
versity-loss-non-native-plants.htm> E-mail

By  <http://www.natureworldnews.com/reporters/samantha-mathewson> Samantha
Mathewson

Oct 01, 2015 11:56 AM EDT



Research shows that non-native plants lessen the diversity of insect
populations in local communities. (Photo : Karin Burghardt, Douglas
Tallamy/University of Delaware)

Some species can adapt to change but others are slightly less resilient.
Some insects, it seems, are among the latter category and as non-native
plants invade global herbivore communities, insect diversity is beginning to
decline. According to a University of Delaware (UD) study, that partly
because humans make decisions on which plants to grow in their gardens. 

 

 

To test this theory, researchers planted various native and non-native tree
species within a controlled garden. Some were fairly similar to one another,
while others were non-native. After observing species living among these
plants over a three-year period, researchers found that the distantly
related trees housed fewer diverse herbivores, and - when moving from one
non-native tree species to another - the same was true of insects.

"You get this compounding effect where you have a lower diversity of
herbivores per tree, but then you also are getting more similar species as
you move between trees species and among sites, so you end up with even less
diverse communities than you would expect," Karin Burghardt, a UD alumna and
one of the researchers of the study, said in a
<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/uod-ssi092815.php> news
release. "There is this group of species of non-natives that do not have any
close native relatives at all. These non-natives support more generalized
and redundant herbivore communities than the native plants that they're
potentially replacing on landscapes."

This habitat change is especially devastating for young herbivores, which
act as a good indicator of how plants are supporting the local ecosystem.

"The relationship between the adult and food is far weaker than the
relationship between immatures and food, so when you find adults on the
non-natives, it doesn't mean that much. When you find immatures, that's what
you should be measuring," Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology in the
UD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said in the release.
"Those are the plants that are creating those immatures and so we do get
significant differences between the immatures that are using native plants
versus the immatures using non-natives."

Native plants generally support herbivore communities better on a per tree
basis in comparison to the non-native counterparts, the researchers noted.
Overall, this study sheds light on how homeowners may be affecting local
insects in deciding which plants to grow.

"If you think about it, you're driving around the suburban environment, and
every time a new development goes in, you have a lot of decision making
happening as to what plant species are going to be planted around those
properties," Burghardt explained in
<http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2016/sep/native-plants-insects-092815.html> a
statement. "If we do all that landscaping with non-native plants, are we
limiting the wildlife and conservation support system that could be
available within that given plot of land? What the gardens we constructed
for the study are trying to replicate are landscaping decisions that people
might make if they wanted to support native insect communities that in turn
support much of the diversity around us."

The study was recently published in
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12492/abstract;jsessionid=56
824167D65240D0A50F6B064B39597E.f03t02> Ecology Letters. 

For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our
sister site, Headlines and Global News ( <http://www.hngn.com/> HNGN).

-Follow Samantha on Twitter  <https://twitter.com/Sam_Ashley13>
@Sam_Ashley13

 

 

From: aliens-l-request at list.auckland.ac.nz
[mailto:aliens-l-request at list.auckland.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Pamela Zevit
Adamah Consultants
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 1:04 PM
To: Issg List <aliens-l at list.auckland.ac.nz>
Subject: [Aliens-L] Biodiversity Drops In Areas Dominated By Non-Native
Plants

 

"Some species can adapt to change but others are slightly less resilient.
Some insects, it seems, are among the latter category and as non-native
plants invade global herbivore communities, insect diversity is beginning to
decline. According to a University of Delaware (UD) study, that partly
because humans make decisions on which plants to grow in their gardens."

http://tinyurl.com/nfx3opf

 

Pamela Zevit, RPBio 
Adamah Consultants 

Coquitlam BC Canada
604-939-0523 

 <mailto:adamah at telus.net> adamah at telus.net 

Re-connecting People & Nature 

Science World - Scientists in the Schools Ambassador



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.maipc.org/pipermail/maipc-maipc.org/attachments/20151002/6a187b7b/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 174 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.maipc.org/pipermail/maipc-maipc.org/attachments/20151002/6a187b7b/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 233434 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.maipc.org/pipermail/maipc-maipc.org/attachments/20151002/6a187b7b/attachment-0001.jpeg>