Changes in spider diversity and community structure along abandonment and vegetation succession in rice paddy ecosystems

•We examined effects of rice paddy abandonment on spider assemblages.•Abundance and species richness were higher in early succession than in paddy fields.•Spider abundance decreased with succession, but species richness was not affected.•Species composition was influenced by both field abandonment a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological engineering 2019-02, Vol.127, p.235-244
Main Authors: Baba, Yuki G., Tanaka, Koichi, Kusumoto, Yoshinobu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abandonment
Abundance
Agricultural land
Araneae
Arthropod
Biodiversity
Community structure
Composition
Ecological succession
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Fields
Ibaraki Prefecture
Kanto region
Moisture content
Ordination
Oryza
Rice fields
Soil
Soil water
Species composition
Species richness
Spiders
Underuse
Vegetation
Water content
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Summary:•We examined effects of rice paddy abandonment on spider assemblages.•Abundance and species richness were higher in early succession than in paddy fields.•Spider abundance decreased with succession, but species richness was not affected.•Species composition was influenced by both field abandonment and succession.•Combination of cultivated and abandoned fields increases overall spider diversity. Field abandonment is a new threat to the biodiversity of agricultural land, but its impacts on arthropod communities remain unclear. We investigated how field abandonment influences spider abundance and diversity in rice paddy ecosystems. We collected spiders in paddy fields and six types of abandoned fields with different combinations of vegetation successional stage (early, middle, or late) and soil water content (wet or dry) in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. The abundance and species richness of cursorial spiders were higher in the abandoned fields than in the paddy fields, but there was no difference in the case of orb-weavers. Total spider abundance decreased with increasing successional stage, but the responses differed between orb-weavers and cursorial spiders: the abundance of orb-weavers decreased in the middle stage, whereas that of cursorial spiders decreased in the late stage. Soil water content affected only the abundance of orb-weavers: abundance was higher on wet soil than on dry soil. Species richness was not affected by either vegetation succession or soil water content. On the other hand, an individual-based species-accumulation curve showed that rarefied species richness tended to be greater in abandoned fields at the late stage. Ordination analysis showed that species composition clearly differed among paddy and abandoned fields at different successional stages. Our findings suggest that spider abundance and diversity are higher in abandoned fields than in cultivated fields, and that species composition varies depending on field abandonment and succession. Therefore, maintaining cultivated fields and abandoned fields at different successional stages can maintain a high diversity of spiders across rice paddy ecosystems.
ISSN:0925-8574
1872-6992
DOI:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.12.007