Impact of plant community structure and its diversity on richness and abundance of arthropod aphidophagous natural enemy community

Abstract

Arthropod natural enemies (ANEs) play an indispensable role in maintaining the balance for plant communities that also significantly affects the ANE diversities not only by supporting herbivorous prey, but also by providing habitats and floral food resources. Studying the diversity of ANEs is thus vital to develop an understanding of sustainable pest control. Relationships of the vegetation diversity (including richness, coverage, and Shannon–Wiener diversity) with associated arthropod aphidophagous natural enemies (AANEs) and their groups under Pinus tabuliformis of different distances were analyzed by non-metric multidimensional scaling (metaMDS). Our results indicated that the vegetation richness affects AANEs at a small scale, while the vegetation structure affects it at a large scale. The richness and abundance of AANEs and the abundance of green lacewings (GLs) and aphid parasitoids (APs) were positively related to neighboring tree richness. But the richness of AANEs and aphidophagous ladybirds (ALs) were negatively associated with nearby tree coverage, as well as AANE richness with close-up shrub coverage, while the abundance of AANEs, ALs, and GLs possessed a negative and hump-shaped relationship with nearby tree coverage, as well as the abundance of AANEs and GLs with close-up shrub coverage. When tree and shrub layers each had approximately half coverage within a vegetation structure, the richness and abundance of AANEs were highest. Similarly, the richness and abundance of AANEs were positively related to neighboring blooming plant richness. However, the richness of AANEs and ALs, and the abundance of AANEs, AL, GL, and APs had a positive association either with the coverage or with the Shannon–Wiener diversity of close-up blooming plants. Half coverage of the tree and shrub layer combined with higher diversities (richness, coverage, and Shannon–Wiener diversity) of blooming plants resulted in low aphid density. The results provide a basis for effectively improving AANE diversity.