Arthropod Abundance and Diversity in Bt and Non-Bt Cotton Fields

By M. Sisterson, R. Biggs, C. Olson, Y. Carrière, T. Dennehy, B. Tabashnik. 2004

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The widespread planting of crops genetically modified to produce Bacillus thuringeinsis Berliner (Bt) toxins for pest control may affect nontarget arthropods. To address this issue, we compared the abundance and diversity of arthropods on plants in field plots of Bt cotton, non-Bt cotton, and a row mixture of 75% Bt cotton and 25% non-Bt cotton at two sites in Arizona. Over three sampling dates during 2 yr, we recorded all of the arthropods found on 120 cotton plants per treatment. This yielded 3,309 individual arthropods from 69 families. Excluding pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella Saunders, the pest targeted by Bt cotton, we compared the abundance and diversity of all arthropods, chewing herbivores, sucking herbivores, rasping-sucking arthropods, and natural enemies. Arthropod abundance was significantly affected by site, plant height, and cotton type. More arthropods were collected from row mixture plots than Bt plots, but arthropod abundance did not differ significantly between Bt plots and non-Bt plots. The number of families collected was 57 for row mixture plots, 55 for non-Bt plots, and 47 for Bt plots. The number of families increased as arthropod abundance increased, suggesting that the differences in diversity among treatments were caused by differences in abundance. Within row mixture plots, arthropod abundance and diversity did not differ significantly between Bt plants and non-Bt plants. We conclude that the differences between Bt and non-Bt cultivars had relatively minor effects on the arthropod community on cotton plants.

Subfields: Insect Science, Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6eb9a1b02d45d2ffee23e7d8dce0e985bb321e72

How researchers see this paper

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In Insect Science

1. S. Naranjo
2. Jörg Romeis
3. M. Meissle
4. Franz Bigler
5. J. Ruberson
6. J. Bale
7. A. Shelton
8. J. V. van Lenteren

In Molecular Biology

1. S. Naranjo
2. Jörg Romeis
3. M. Meissle
4. J. Ruberson
5. Franz Bigler
6. A. Shelton
7. J. Bale
8. J. V. van Lenteren

In Plant Science

1. S. Naranjo
2. Jörg Romeis
3. M. Meissle
4. J. Ruberson
5. Franz Bigler
6. A. Shelton
7. J. V. van Lenteren
8. J. Bale

Citations in the corpus

• Long-Term Assessment of the Effects of Transgenic Bt Cotton on the Function of the Natural Enemy Community (2005, background): “…in predation of Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say) eggs on potatoes that had received applications of beetle activeBt compared with those left untreated, and Sisterson et al. (2004) reported no differences in rates of predation on sentinel eggs of P. gossypiella in Bt compared with non-Bt cotton.”
• Long-Term Assessment of the Effects of Transgenic Bt Cotton on the Abundance of Nontarget Arthropod Natural Enemies (2005, background): “…corn (Orr and Landis 1997, Lozzia 1999, Wold et al. 2001, Bourguet et al. 2002, Al-Deeb and Wilde 2003, Musser and Shelton 2003, CandolÞ et al. 2004), or Bt cotton (Flint et al. 1995, Men et al. 2003, Sisterson et al. 2004, Hagerty et al. 2005) on populations of various nontarget arthropod taxa.”
• Biological control and sustainable food production (2008, background): “Predation rates on sentinel lepidopteran eggs or larvae did not differ between Bt and untreated non-Bt fields (Musser & Shelton 2003; Sisterson et al. 2004; Naranjo 2005b), but were significantly reduced by the application of broad-spectrum insecticides (Musser & Shelton 2003).”
• Ecological compatibility of GM crops and biological control (2009, unknown): “Similarly, Sisterson et al. (2004) and Naranjo (2005b) noted that predation of several non-target prey species was comparable in Bt-and non-Bt cotton.”
• Genetically engineered crops help support conservation biological control (2019, background): “The impact of Bt crops on the biological control services supplied by generalist arthropod predators have been uniformly neutral in Bt maize (Ahmad et al., 2006) and Bt cotton (Head et al., 2005; Naranjo, 2005b; Olson and Ruberson, 2012; Sisterson et al., 2004).”
• A Multiyear, Large-Scale Comparison of Arthropod Populations on Commercially Managed Bt and Non-Bt Cotton Fields (2005, result): “This supports the original conclusions of the risk assessment performed for Bt cotton (Mendelsohn et al. 2003) and is generally consistent with other studies carried out in various countries that have found few consistent differences between unsprayed Bt cotton and non-Bt cotton Þelds (Men et al. 20”