Impacts of Native and Non-Native Plants on Urban Insect Communities: Are Native Plants Better Than Non-Natives?
Impacts of Native and Non-native plants on Urban Insect Communities: Are Native Plants Better than Non-natives? by Carl Scott Clem A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Auburn, Alabama December 12, 2015 Key Words: native plants, non-native plants, caterpillars, natural enemies, associational interactions, congeneric plants Copyright 2015 by Carl Scott Clem Approved by David Held, Chair, Associate Professor: Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology Charles Ray, Research Fellow: Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology Debbie Folkerts, Assistant Professor: Department of Biological Sciences Robert Boyd, Professor: Department of Biological Sciences Abstract With continued suburban expansion in the southeastern United States, it is increasingly important to understand urbanization and its impacts on sustainability and natural ecosystems. Expansion of suburbia is often coupled with replacement of native plants by alien ornamental plants such as crepe myrtle, Bradford pear, and Japanese maple. Two projects were conducted for this thesis. The purpose of the first project (Chapter 2) was to conduct an analysis of existing larval Lepidoptera and Symphyta hostplant records in the southeastern United States, comparing their species richness on common native and alien woody plants. We found that, in most cases, native plants support more species of eruciform larvae compared to aliens. Alien congener plant species (those in the same genus as native species) supported more species of larvae than alien, non-congeners. Most of the larvae that feed on alien plants are generalist species. However, most of the specialist species feeding on alien plants use congeners of native plants, providing evidence of a spillover, or false spillover, effect.
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