Multi-year arthropod community surveys on dioecious plants

Knowledge graph centered on Multi-year arthropod community surveys on dioecious plants with 34 nodes and 124 connections. Top connected: Ligusticum porteri, Atriplex canescens, Populus, Valeriana, T. sessile.

Method synopsis

Exhaustive visual surveys of arthropod abundance on randomly selected male and female plants conducted across multiple years to quantify sex-biased community structure.

Synthesized from method descriptions across 2 papers using this protocol.

Procedure from a recent peer-reviewed implementation

Steps below were extracted from the most recent peer-reviewed implementation of this protocol in the corpus — Mechanisms underlying plant sexual dimorphism in multi-trophic arthropod communities (2013), Ecology. Implementations in other papers (listed below) may differ.

1. Select study plants
   97 randomly selected flowering plants (67 female and 30 male) were chosen from the study population. Plant sex was determined by flower characteristics, with female flowers having pistils and male flowers having stamens.
   Quantities: 97 total plants: 67 female, 30 maleDuration: Initial selection at start of each growing seasonConditions: During flowering period when sex determination was possible
   Equipment: visual identification
2. Conduct arthropod surveys
   Exhaustive searches of each plant were conducted to count all arthropods. All individuals of taxa commonly reported to be predatory (see Natural history) were counted regardless of observed activity. For each taxon actual predation events were observed on one or more occasions. Survey sample size for aphids, predators, and ants was 166 (2009, n = 97; 2010, n = 29; 2011, n = 40), 162 (2009, n = 97; 2010, n = 100; 2011, n = 32), and 156 (2009, n = 97; 2010, n = 29; 2011, n = 30) observations, respectively.
   Quantities: Total observations: 166 for aphids, 162 for predators, 156 for ants across all yearsDuration: Surveys conducted across three consecutive years (2009-2011)Conditions: During active growing season
   Equipment: visual counting

Typical Equipment

• visual identification
• visual counting

Output Measurements

• aphid abundance
• predator abundance
• ant abundance
• presence/absence data

Papers Using This Protocol (2)

Species Studied With This Protocol