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11 March 2020 Winter-Active Spider Fauna is Affected by Plantation Forest Type
Kapilkumar Ingle, Hardeep Kaur, Nikolett Gallé-Szpisjak, József Bürgés, Áron Szabó, Róbert Gallé
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Abstract

Plantations of non-native trees for commercial use are common practice in Europe. They are known to have severe ecological impacts on arthropod fauna by altering microclimatic conditions and reducing microhabitat diversity. However, the effect of plantation tree species on winter-active fauna is relatively unknown. Spiders are a diverse predatory arthropod taxon with strong effect on their prey populations. The composition of spider communities sensitively indicates changes in habitat structure. We established 40 sampling sites in five non-native pine and five native poplar plantations and collected spiders with pitfall traps for two winters in the Southern part of Hungary. We assessed the average height of vegetation and percentage cover of leaf litter, mosses, herbaceous vegetation, and shrubs to characterize habitat structure. We found species richness and activity density of spiders in the nonnative compared to the native plantations, presumably due to the more temperate microclimate in pine than in poplar plantations. However, there was no significant effect of habitat structure and its interaction with forest type on species richness and activity density of spiders. Species composition of non-native and native plantation forests differed significantly. Furthermore, we identified six characteristic spider species of non-native plantations with preference for relatively moist habitat conditions. The single characteristic species, (Agroeca cuprea Menge, 1873) for the native plantations preferred dry and partly shaded habitats. We conclude that the effect of microclimatic differences and prey availability presumably overrides the effect of habitat structure on winter-active spiders.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Kapilkumar Ingle, Hardeep Kaur, Nikolett Gallé-Szpisjak, József Bürgés, Áron Szabó, and Róbert Gallé "Winter-Active Spider Fauna is Affected by Plantation Forest Type," Environmental Entomology 49(3), 601-606, (11 March 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvaa025
Received: 30 November 2019; Accepted: 11 February 2020; Published: 11 March 2020
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KEYWORDS
exotic pine
habitat structure
microclimate
species richness
winter-active spider
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