Effects of the timing of grazing on insect diversity and insect-plant interactions in mountain grasslands.

ABSTRACT: Grazing is the common agricultural land-use in mountain regions. It is of high socioeconomic importance but also essential for conservation as extensive mountain pastures are hotspots of biodiversity. Climate change is causing earlier growing seasons, prompting earlier livestock turnout. The effects of grazing on biodiversity, however, may differ depending on the time of the year, yet our understanding of these effects is limited. Here, we evaluate how short-term effects of different livestock turnouts affect taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity of pollinators (wild bees and butterflies) and phytophagous insects (leafhoppers) as well as plant-insect interactions on eight mountain pastures in the northern Alps, Germany. At each pasture, we established three grazing treatments i

SUBMITTER: Panassiti B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12611450 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature