Arthropod Diversity and Community Structure in Fields of Non-geneticall Modified (GM) and Herbicide-tolerant GM Rice

Abstract

One of the primary concerns about the environmental risks of genetically modified (GM) crops is that they may have adverse effects on the local arthropod communities. In this study, we investigated whether the arthropod diversity and community structure in fields of GM rice tolerant to protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting herbicides differ from those in non-GM (control) rice fields. The aim of this study was to assess the potential adverse effects of GM rice on the local arthropod communities. During the growing seasons in the study period, we collected arthropods from both fields by using yellow sticky traps and compared the diversity and community structure of arthropods from the two sites. Overall, the GM rice had no significant effect on the diversity of the local arthropod communities. In addition, multivariate analyses (permutational multivariate analysis of variance and nonmetric multidimensional scaling) showed that the structures of arthropod communities were not affected by the rice genotype (GM vs. non-GM), although these comparisons were made using data obtained at different sampling dates.