Quantitative assessment of plant-arthropod interactions in forest canopies: A plot-based approach.

ABSTRACT: Research on canopy arthropods has progressed from species inventories to the study of their interactions and networks, enhancing our understanding of how hyper-diverse communities are maintained. Previous studies often focused on sampling individual tree species, individual trees or their parts. We argue that such selective sampling is not ideal when analyzing interaction network structure, and may lead to erroneous conclusions. We developed practical and reproducible sampling guidelines for the plot-based analysis of arthropod interaction networks in forest canopies. Our sampling protocol focused on insect herbivores (leaf-chewing insect larvae, miners and gallers) and non-flying invertebrate predators (spiders and ants). We quantitatively sampled the focal arthropods from felled trees, o

SUBMITTER: Volf M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6808442 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature