Importance of Ecological Scale in Montane Grasshopper (Orthoptera: Acrididae) Species Structure in Similar Habitat between Differing Soil Textures and Dominant Vegetative Canopy Coverage

Abstract

Discrepancies in scale dynamics often make cohesive structural conclusions difficult, especially when dealing with ecological variance. We studied presence and abundance of grasshopper species in similar, yet distinct, montane habitat of southeast Wyoming and northern Colorado, USA. By limiting ecological variance, grasshopper species structure at two behavioral scales (grouped species dynamics and individual species interactions) was maximized with regard to soil texture and vegetative canopy coverage. Combining univariate and multivariate statistical methods, we note montane grasshopper species interactions to be scale dependent.