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Variation in grazing management practices supports diverse butterfly communities across grassland working landscapes

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Abstract

Landscape changes and resource exploitation have driven global biodiversity declines and reduced provision of ecological functions and services. In grassland working landscapes managed for ecological services and livestock production, it is essential to understand the influence of grazing practices on biodiversity to guide conservation. We used grassland butterflies to investigate the effects of four grazing management practices on biodiversity and pollination services from 2015 to 2016. We hypothesized grazing management practices would generate differing floristic resources that would thereby influence grassland butterfly community composition. To address our hypothesis, we sampled floral resources using belt transects and butterfly community and species level dynamics using line-transect distance sampling. We detected 2578 butterflies representing 34 species. Management practice was not a significant predictor of floral (p = 0.319) or butterfly community composition (p = 0.604), and sites under the same management showed dissimilarity in ordination space, indicating differences that may not be associated with grazing practices. At the species level, management explained density for six of nine butterfly species, but no individual management practice was optimal for a majority of detected species. Thus, over the timeframe of this study, grazing management practices did not generate differences in floristic community composition to drive community-level responses in grassland butterflies. Rather, management drove differences in individual species’ abundance within the butterfly community, likely contributing to the butterfly diversity observed at a broader scale.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the U.S. Forest Service for permission to sample pastures within the Sheyenne National Grasslands and providing information on leasees’ management practices. We also thank the North Dakota State University Range Science department for assisting with the prescribed burns necessary for the experimental design. Finally, we thank the North Dakota State University Agricultural Experiment Station for funding this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Range Science Program, North Dakota State University, 1230 Albrecht Blvd., 201 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND, 58102, USA

    Cayla R. Bendel, Torre J. Hovick & Ryan F. Limb

  2. Department of Entomology, North Dakota State University, 1300 Albrecht Blvd., 202 Hultz Hall, Fargo, ND, 58102, USA

    Jason P. Harmon

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  1. Cayla R. Bendel
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  2. Torre J. Hovick
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  3. Ryan F. Limb
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Correspondence to Torre J. Hovick.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4 and Supplementary Figure S1.

Table 2 Pasture-level characteristics, estimated abundance from distance sampling, and total richness of grassland butterflies detected during line-transect distance sampling conducted from 2015 to 2016 in tallgrass prairie landscapes grazed by cattle
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Table 3 List of all grassland butterfly species detected and their abundance during line-transect distance sampling conducted from 2015 to 2016 in tallgrass prairie landscapes grazed by cattle
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Table 4 Total raw abundance and richness of the grassland butterfly community during line-transect distance sampling conducted in three sampling rounds (Early—June 10–30, Middle—July 1–20, Late—July 21–August 10) from 2015 to 2016 in tallgrass prairie landscapes grazed by cattle
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Bendel, C.R., Hovick, T.J., Limb, R.F. et al. Variation in grazing management practices supports diverse butterfly communities across grassland working landscapes. J Insect Conserv 22, 99–111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-017-0041-9

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