EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENTOMOLOGY

Eur. J. Entomol. 118: 159-170, 2021 | DOI: 10.14411/eje.2021.017

Structure of canopy and ground-dwelling arthropod communities in olive orchards is determined by the type of soil coverOriginal article

Jesús CASTRO ORCID...¹, Francisco S. TORTOSA ORCID...², Antonio J. CARPIO ORCID...^{2, 3}

¹ Department of Ecology and Animal Biology, University of Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain; e-mail: jcastro@uvigo.es

² Department of Zoology, University of Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Córdoba, Spain; e-mail: ba1satof@uco.es

³ SaBio, Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (CSIC-UCLM-JCCM), Ronda de Toledo 12, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain; e-mail: Antonio.carpio@uclm.es

The intensification of agriculture in olive groves, especially the modification or elimination of spontaneous vegetation, alters the relationships in arthropod communities and reduces their interactions and ecosystem services. This study was carried out in nine olive groves in which there was either a planted cover crop, spontaneous cover crop or bare ground. The interactions of ground-dwelling, canopy and flying arthropods in trophic webs were calculated for each olive grove soil management regime at the family level taking into consideration their different functional traits: feeding guilds, specific agricultural traits and trophic level. Olive groves with spontaneous cover had trophic webs with a higher number of plausible links between arthropod families and a more balanced distribution of specimens among trophic levels compared to those with planted cover and bare ground. There was a similar number of arthropod families consisting of both pests and their natural enemies in the planted cover regime, while olive groves with bare ground had simpler trophic webs. The complexity of plausible trophic links was greater in olive groves with spontaneous plant cover despite the similar values for family richness in the three-olive grove soil management regimes. Qualitative values (such as functional traits) were more diverse in agroecosystems with spontaneous plant cover in which there were more sources of food.

Keywords: Olive groves, undergrowth, arthropod community, functional diversity, planted cover, spontaneous cover, bare ground, unweighted quantitative descriptors

Received: October 25, 2020; Revised: May 12, 2021; Accepted: May 12, 2021; Published online: June 14, 2021  Show citation