Composition, abundance and biodiversity of terrestrial arthropods in pastures and their relationship with landscaping plants

Abstract

We investigated the association of landscaping plants with the communities of ground-dwelling arthropods within pastures and tested the hypothesis that arthropod biodiversity increases with vegetation heterogeneity. The community characterization and biodiversity of arthropods in a pasture were compared with those within communities with landscaping plants, including forest remnants, Forsythia koreana and Prunus serotina. The total abundance of mites was greater within the forest remnants than within the pasture; however, the abundance of insects and spiders did not differ. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling and the multiresponse permutation procedure revealed that the community composition of insects and spiders differed according to vegetation type. The abundance of Teleogryllus emma was highest within the forest remnant community, which suggested the species’ dependency on vegetation type. Species richness and the Shannon index of insects increased within F. koreana but not within P. serotina compared with the pasture. This suggested that belts of shrubs might have a greater promoting effect on insect biodiversity than belts of trees. Species richness of spiders did not differ by vegetation type. The total number of insect and spider species within the study area increased by 2.8 and 3.5 times, respectively, by establishing three types of vegetation. These results suggested that increasing vegetation heterogeneity by establishing landscaping plants is a good option for conserving insect and spider biodiversity in pastures.