Undergraduate Student Work
Work/Availability
Open Access Undergraduate Student Work
Type of Work
Poster Presentation
Keywords
Arthropod populations--Iowa--Black Hawk County; Plant species diversity--Iowa--Black Hawk County;
Abstract
The University of Northern Iowa’s Tallgrass Prairie Center converted corn and soybean fields in the Cedar River Natural Resource Area to four mixes of perennial tallgrass prairie species. Research plots were randomly seeded with one of four treatments of native prairie vegetation including a switchgrass monoculture and a 32-species prairie mix. We studied ground arthropod abundance in Switchgrass and the 32-species prairie mix at various distances from the nearest woody edge using pitfall traps. We hypothesized that a 32-species Prairie mix would support greater numbers of ground arthropods than a Switchgrass monoculture and that ground arthropod abundance would be greater in traps set closer to a woody edge. Our results indicated little difference in arthropod abundance between the Switchgrass and Prairie plots. Arachnid captures were greater nearer to a woody edge, but catch rates of other arthropods studied did not vary with distance from a woody edge.
Date of Work
2014
Department
Department of Biology
Department
Tallgrass Prairie Center
First Advisor
Mark C. Myers
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Copyright
©2014 Stephanie Paape, Libby Torresani, Dr. Mark C Myers
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Paape, Stephanie; Torresani, Libby; and Myers, Mark C., "Ground arthropod abundance in switchgrass and diverse prairie agroenergy crops" (2014). Undergraduate Student Work. 26.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ugswork/26
