Bottom‐up effects of plant quantity and quality on arthropod diversity across multiple trophic levels in a semi‐arid grassland

• Published in: The Journal of ecology Vol. 110; no. 11; pp. 2717 - 2730
• Main Authors: Lu, Xiaoming, Zhao, Xuezhen, Tachibana, Taiki, Uchida, Kei, Sasaki, Takehiro, Bai, Yongfei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2022
• Subjects: Aridity; arthropod biomass; arthropod taxon richness; Arthropods; Balanced diets; Biomass; Carbohydrates; China; Coexistence; Diet; Endophytes; Feeding; Feeding behavior; Feeding preferences; Food; Food chains; food web; Food webs; Foods; Grasslands; Guilds; herbaceous plants; herbivore; Herbivores; Host plants; leaf protein; Leaves; lignin content; Monoculture; Mouth; Mouthparts; multi‐trophic interactions; Nutritional requirements; parasitoids; Phosphorus; plant leaf traits; plant productivity; Plants; plant–herbivore interactions; predator; Predators; Prey; Productivity; Proteins; Specificity; Taxa; Trophic levels; China

Plant quantity and quality can independently affect the diversity of the entire arthropod communities and multiple arthropod taxa in grassland ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how these effects on arthropod taxa at one trophic level propagate through food web to influence the diversity of hig...