Delaying insect access alters community composition on small carrion: a quantitative approach

0511977 - BC 2020 RIV US eng J - Článek v odborném periodiku
Kadlec, J. - Mikátová, S. - Máslo, P. - Šípková, H. - Šípek, P. - Sládeček, František Xaver Jiří
Delaying insect access alters community composition on small carrion: a quantitative approach.
Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata. Roč. 167, č. 8 (2019), s. 729-740. ISSN 0013-8703. E-ISSN 1570-7458
Grant ostatní: GA JU(CZ) 152/2019/P; AV ČR(CZ) MSM200961902
Program: Program na podporu mezinárodní spolupráce začínajících výzkumných pracovníků
Institucionální podpora: RVO:60077344
Klíčová slova: Calliphoridae * carrion * Coleoptera
Obor OECD: Ecology
Impakt faktor: 1.696, rok: 2019
Způsob publikování: Omezený přístup
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eea.12826

We present a study of interactions in the highly competitive insect communities inhabiting the carrion of small mammals. Via manipulation in a fully quantitative design, we delayed community development by excluding insect colonization in mouse and rat carcasses for 3 days, to study the role of early competitively dominant colonizers [burying beetles (Nicrophorus spp., Coleoptera: Silphidae) and blowfly larvae (Diptera: Calliphoridae)] in the course of heterotrophic succession on small cadavers. Earlier studies demonstrated that in the case of large mammalian carrion, exclusion of insects’ access to the carcass in the early stages of decomposition altered the successional trajectory and species assemblages. However, the effect of such manipulation in easy monopolizable small vertebrate carrion remained unknown. Our results demonstrate that delaying insect access to carrion significantly lowered blowfly larvae abundances, while it simultaneously had no effect on colonization and carrion burial by burying beetles. Higher abundances of blowfly larvae seem to deter necrophagous beetles, whereas they are not harmful to the larvae of flesh flies, at least in larger rat carcasses. Predatory beetle species preferred the lower abundances of blowfly larvae, presumably due to better accessibility of their prey. Our results therefore suggest that in the course of the entire season, larvae of blowflies are the dominant competitors in small carcasses, and significantly affect the assembly of other insect groups, whereas burying beetles may exhibit a more temporal pattern of dominance.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0302403