ON THE NATURE OF AGROBIONT SPIDERS

By F. Samu, C. Szinetár. 2002

187 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Results from a 10 year survey of spiders in Hungarian arable and natural grassland habitats are cumulated in order to reveal the key characteristics of agrobiont species. We define agrobionts as species that reach high dominance in agroecosystems. The most dominant species, Pardosa agrestis, on average accounted for 40% of the total spider population in Hungarian arable fields. The presence of agrobionts led to a strong skew in arable spider community species distriibution. Regardless of the over-dominance by agrobionts, arable spider communities had a potential for very high species richness. The agrobiont segment of arable spider communities showed very little field-to-field or regional variation, i.e. the same agrobiont species occurred in all fields. Agrobionts were indicators of arable habitats, and were rare in other habitat types, but in many species preferences for specific natural habitat types could be shown. These natural habitat types were often strongly abiotically driven, frequently disturbed habitats. The life cycle of agrobionts showed synchronization with the arable crop-growing season. While many closely related non-agrobiont species had maturity and reproductive periods either earlier or later than the main crop vegetation period, agrobionts invariably reached adulthood and reproduced during that period. Association with frequently disturbed natural habitats and phenological synchronization with the annual arable disturbance regime are such traits that support the theory that agrobiont species are adapted to predictably ephemeral habitats.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/664d370a0ca85244dbe46b6440c4fc544df564eb

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Citations in the corpus

How landscape structure, land-use intensity and habitat diversity affect components of total arthropod diversity in agricultural landscapes (2007, unknown): “However, as only a small set of species is adapted to the high disturbance levels of agricultural fields (Maelfait & De Keer 1990; Samu & Szinetar 2002 ), uniform landscapes as well as intensive farming systems can lead to a strong homogenization of the local communities, resulting in a decrease in”
Responses of plant, insect and spider biodiversity to local and landscape scale management intensity in cereal crops and grasslands (2012, unknown): “(2008) showed that this rable (agrobiont) spider species, which is often the most abundant pecies in Central European crop fields (Samu and Szinetár, 2002), as negatively influenced by the high percentages of non-crop abitats in the surrounding landscape.”
Contrasting responses of arable spiders to the landscape matrix at different spatial scales (2007, background): “In contrast, Pardosa agrestis (Lycosidae) responded at the largest scale, which might be expected because this is a distinct pioneer species within its family, and a high mobility is necessary for colonization of early-successional habitats (Samu & Szinetár, 2002).”
The role of perennial habitats for Central European farmland spiders (2005, background): “This pattern suggests that a mosaic of crops and perennial habitats is superior to arable crops alone for most “agrobionts”, despite their clearly higher dominance in crops according to pitfall trap data (Hänggi et al., 1995; Samu and Szinetar, 2002; Bolaños, 2003).”
Landscape effects on recolonisation patterns of spiders in arable fields (2008, unknown): “The spider families Lycosidae and Linyphiidae (Araneae) are common on arable land in Central and Northwestern Europe (Toft, 1989; Feber et al., 1998; Samu and Szinetár, 2002; Pfiffner and Luka, 2003; Clough et al., 2005; Öberg and Ekbom, 2006) and they are known to have an impact on common insect…”