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Video Q&A ViewAttendees 1

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

10-Minute Paper

P-IE: Ecology On-Demand Presentations

Seasonality, not local scale grassland restoration influences Coccinellidae (lady beetle) network structure and native coccinellid abundance

On-Demand
On-Demand

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Justin Luong

    PhD Canididate
    University of California
    Santa Cruz, California

    • Co-Author(s)

  • KL

    Katie Lefley

    Agilent Technologies
    Carpenteria, California

  • CO

    Christopher Orozco

    Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
    Los Angeles, California

  • CR

    Carlos Rodriguez Frausto

    Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
    Los Angeles, California

  • EK

    Eric Kim

    National Park Service
    Moose, Wyoming

  • CC

    Chelsea Chung

    Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
    Los Angeles, California

  • JR

    Jeremy Rios

    Center for Circadian Biology
    San Diego, California

  • BL

    Barry Lao

    Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
    Los Angeles, California

  • Katja C. Seltmann

    University of California
    Santa Barbara, California

Native coccinellid richness and abundance have vastly decreased in the past 40 years due to land use change and the introduction of non-native coccinellids, Coccinella sempunctata and Harmonia axyridis. Non-native coccinellids can competitively exclude native coccinellids from ideal, prey-rich, and -dense areas. Habitat compression theory suggests that competitively excluded natives may be retreating to adjacent semi-natural habitat and the field of dreams hypothesis predicts that if wildlife will return as we restore habitat. We predicted that restored and remnant grasslands could serve as this semi-natural habitat and refuge for native coccinellids, especially specialists.  We sampled coccinellids in 30-minute periods twice a week for ten weeks every season between fall 2017 and spring 2019 at nine sites in Santa Barbara, CA, USA. Plant-host interaction data was recorded for all observed coccinellids. The nine sites had three land status treatments: remnant, restored and non-restored. Seasonality had affected coccinellid abundance and richness, but land status did not. Non-metric multidimensional space plots showed that remnant grasslands had more specialist coccinellids and rank-abundance indicated that remnant sites had greater species evenness at remnant sites. Interaction diversity and modularity varied by season, but modularity also had an interactive effect with season and land status. Conservation of remnant grassland habitat can help provide refuge for native coccinellid specialists. Contrary to the popular ‘field of dreams’ hypothesis that predicts wildlife will return as we restore habitat, our results suggest current methods may need to be further developed to effectively restore higher trophic level insects such as coccinellids.