Instead, the invertebrate community of native tall fescue in this experiment appears to be primarily driven by environmental conditions interacting with plant geographic origin. Invertebrate abundance and community composition A total learn more of 18650 invertebrates were collected and identified to family level from the experimental plants. Springtails (Collembola), mites (Acari), and flies and midges (Diptera) comprised 48%, 23% and 14% of the individual invertebrates, respectively (a total of 85%) (Table 1). The rest 15% of the invertebrates were Coleopterans (6%), Hymenopterans (4%), spiders (2%), and Hemipterans (2%). Only one percentage of species remained unidentified. 56% and 24% of the invertebrate community consisted of detritivores
and parasitoids, respectively, because of the high number of detritivorous Collembola and Acari mites and parasitic Hymenopterans in our samples (Table 1). Only 10% of all invertebrates were herbivores, but this feeding guild was taxonomically the most diverse comprising of 42 identified taxa. E+ plants did not differ from E- and ME- plants in the abundance of any taxonomic invertebrate group (Table 2) or feeding guild (Table 3). However, endophyte infection affected the abundance of herbivorous and omnivorous dipterans,
and collembolas interactively with water and nutrient treatments. For example, the abundance of herbivorous dipterans was higher on watered and fertilized E- and E+ plants compared to the other treatment AG-120 clinical trial Carnitine palmitoyltransferase II and infection combinations, whereas the abundance of omnivorous dipterans was highest on watered and fertilized E- plants, second highest on untreated E+ plants, and lowest on fertilized E- plants (Table 4a). In contrast
to dipterans, detritivorous Collembola (springtails) were much more abundant and appeared to prefer watered and fertilized E+ plants (Table 4a; see also Faeth and Shochat 2010). Likewise, the total number of herbivores and detritivores did not show a common trend of preference or avoidance of E+ or E- plants in either low or high nutrient environments (Table 2, Fig. 1). Table 2 The effects of endophyte status (E+ = endophyte infected, E- = endophyte-free, and manipulatively endophyte free = ME-), water and nutrient treatments (C = control, N = nutrient, W = water, and WN = water + nutrient), plant origin (A = Åland, G = Gotland, and S = coastal Sweden; K = cultivar “Kentucky 31”) and plant GDC-0068 manufacturer biomass on the abundances of dipterans, mites (Acari), Hymenopterans, collembolas and Coleopterans Taxon Feeding guild Endophyte status (E) Treatment (TRT) Plant origin (PO) E*TRT E*PO TRT*PO Plant biomass df = 2 df = 3 df = 3 df = 6 df = 6 df = 9 df = 1 F p F p F p F p F p F p F p Diptera herbivorous 0.20 0.8202 2.34 0.0727 2.15 0.0931 2.30 0.0337 0.59 0.7402 2.57 0.0070 9.21 0.0026 detritivorous 0.84 0.4317 11.62 <0.0001 3.04 0.0291 0.92 0.4807 1.06 0.3846 2.36 0.0133 5.47 0.0199 omnivorous 1.04 0.3540 0.97 0.4091 1.29 0.2791 3.04 0.0063 0.90 0.