The role of perennial habitats for Central European farmland spiders

By Martin Schmidt, T. Tscharntke. 2005

187 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Spiders are important predators of insect pests. Some species invariably dominate spider communities in crop fields over large parts of Europe, and are therefore considered as “agrobionts”. It is however not clear if these species generally prefer arable habitats, or to what degree they utilize other habitats during times when crops are inhospitable. Here, spider abundances in 26 crop fields and 16 perennial habitats in Germany were compared during spring. Overall spider abundance in winter wheat was 75% lower than in perennial habitats, and species richness was reduced by 46%. Out of a total of 91 species, 73 had higher densities in perennial habitats, including the most dominant crop spiders Erigone atra and Tenuiphantes tenuis. Only one species (Oedothorax apicatus) was significantly more abundant in crops than in perennial habitats. Hence, the high dominance of most “agrobiont” species in crops was due to low densities of other species, and not to their own higher abundances. Therefore, perennial habitats adjacent to crop-fields could enhance spider populations and their potential for biological control in arable fields on a landscape level.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5dd9727414fdf4a77aa9f65cc65608bc164762cf

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Insect Science

Citations in the corpus

Contrasting responses of arable spiders to the landscape matrix at different spatial scales (2007, methodology): “In total, 152 traps were operated for 14 days, starting on 3–4 May 2001.”
Are spiders reacting to local or landscape scale effects in Hungarian pastures (2008, background): “productive land (Benton et al., 2003; Kleijn and Sutherland, 2003; Bengtsson et al., 2005; Schmidt and Tscharntke, 2005 ).”
Landscape effects on recolonisation patterns of spiders in arable fields (2008, unknown): “The linyphiids might have overwintered in the fields, although several studies have found high abundances of spiders in adjacent semi-natural habitats and low abundances in crop fields during winter (Pfiffner and Luka, 2000; Lemke and Poehling, 2002; Schmidt and Tscharntke, 2005b).”
Niche properties of Central European spiders : shading, moisture and the evolution of the habitat niche (2007, unknown): “dunes, Bonte et al ., 2003a; dry grassland, Pozzi & Borcard, 2001; agricultural habitats, Schmidt & Tscharntke, 2005 ).”
Spider diversity in cereal fields: comparing factors at local, landscape and regional scales (2005, background): “It has been found that arable fields are regularly recolonized from perennial habitats (Samu et al., 1999; Holland & Reynolds, 2003; Schmidt & Tscharntke, 2005b).”
Synergistic effects of ground cover and adjacent vegetation on natural enemies of olive insect pests (2013, result): “Spiders showed a strong preference for herbaceous habitats in previous studies (Sunderland and Samu, 2000; Clough et al., 2005; Schmidt and Tscharntke, 2005; Tscharntke et al., 2008; Pluess et al., 2010).”
How landscape structure, land-use intensity and habitat diversity affect components of total arthropod diversity in agricultural landscapes (2007, unknown): “In contrast, more natural habitats embedded in an agricultural matrix contain the majority of the spider species inhabiting the agricultural fields plus a supplement of species bound to the more natural habitat patches (Maelfait & De Keer 1990; Schmidt & Tscharntke 2005).”
Effect of landscape composition and arrangement on biological control agents in a simplified agricultural system: A cost–distance approach (2010, background): “For example, compared with agricultural landscapes with high levels of non-crop land use, simplified landscapes exhibit reduced natural-enemy activity within crops (Schmidt et al., 2008; Schmidt and Tscharntke, 2005; Thies et al., 2003; Thies and Tscharntke, 1999).”
Landscape moderation of biodiversity patterns and processes ‐ eight hypotheses (2012, background): “…versa, is an important process affecting wildlife populations in human-dominated, fragmented landscapes (Landis et al., 2000; Krauss et al., 2004; Ries et al., 2004; Tubelis et al., 2004; Clough et al., 2005; Schmidt & Tscharntke, 2005a, b; Biological Reviews 87 (2012) 661–685 © 2012 The Authors.”