Project Details
Description
Arthropods, in particular insects, are not only a dominant component of diversity in terrestrial ecosystems, with more than one million described species, but also influence a multitude of ecosystem processes in their roles as herbivores, pollinators, seed dispersers, predators, parasites, detritivores or ecosystem engineers. An increasing number of studies documents detrimental effects of land-use intensification on arthropod diversity. Our project has the following objectives:(1) to monitor the abundances and diversity of selected invertebrate taxa, in particular arthropods and molluscs (snails and slugs), in all grassland and forest EPs or VIPs as well as in the BELongDead experiment.(2) to monitor herbivory, predation, and wood and dung decomposition in all grassland and forest EPs, in VIPs to be repeated annually.(3) to coordinate the BELongDead Experiment.(4) to understand the mechanisms underlying land use effects on arthropod communities.(5) to analyse the long-term trends and temporal stability of arthropod populations and communities. (6) to understand the drivers of asynchrony across species which maintain community stability.(7) to investigate biodiversity-functioning relationships and biodiversity-stability relationships for a range of arthropod-driven ecosystem functions.With its continuous annual assessments, the Arthropods core project provides a sound basis for a thorough understanding of the responses of invertebrate communities to land use and its temporal dynamics. The data collected by the project provide baseline information for other projects focusing on particular arthropod taxa, particular organismic interactions or ecosystem processes, and for the development and use of phylogenies
Status | Active |
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Effective start/end date | 1/01/11 → 31/03/26 |