Seasonal variation of ground dwelling arthropod communities in an arid desert of the middle Heihe River basin

Abstract

Abstract: Arthropod is one of the important components of dry desert ecosystems and plays a key role in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning. Up to now, relatively fewer studies have explored seasonal variation in arthropod community composition and diversity of arid desert ecosystems in the Heihe River basin, North-west China. We investigated the composition and diversity of arthropod communities using pitfall trapping method in both early June and mid September in a typical arid desert of the middle Heihe River basin. Main findings of our study are as follows. 1) Tenebrionidae was a key group of the ground dwelling arthropod communities in this arid desert ecosystem. 2) Analysis of NMDS (non-metric multidimensional scaling) indicates significant between-season variation in the abundance, biomass, functional groups of the arthropod communities, which is mainly reflected in the following three aspects. First, the total individuals, total biomass and overall richness are significantly higher in spring than in autumn. Second, Tenebrionidae belonging to detritivores, Oedipodidea and Lygaeidae belonging to Phytophages, and Nesticidae belonging to Predators occurred mainly in spring, whereas Formicidae belonging to Omnivores, Thomisidae and Carabidae belonging to Predator and Curculionidae belonging to Phytophage occurred mainly in autumn. Thirdly, the ratio of predators to detritivores and omnivores in the arthropod communities in the early June census was found to be much higher than that in the mid September census.

CLC Number:

LIU Ji-liang, LI Feng-rui, LIU Qi-jun, NIU Rui-xu. Seasonal variation of ground dwelling arthropod communities in an arid desert of the middle Heihe River basin[J]. Acta Prataculturae Sinica, 2010, 19(5): 161-169.

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