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The monthly dynamics of lawn insects and their relationship with birds at Nanjing Lukou International Airport.

XU Jie1, GAO Jin1, LIU Jin-wei1, WU Cong1, WANG Qi2, ZHENG Hui2, WANG Bei-xin1*   

  1. (1College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China; 2Nanjing Lukou International Airport, Nanjing 211113, China).
  • Online:2018-07-10 Published:2018-07-10

Abstract: Exploring the temporal dynamic relationship between birds and insects helps the control of bird occurrence from a food-chain perspective and the risk reduction of birdair craft collisions. We monthly sampled lawn insects, recorded the airfield bird guild and inspected diets of bird specimens from March to November, 2015 at Nanjing Lukou International Airport. A total of 26221 insect individuals representing 123 species, 99 families, and 13 orders were collected and identified. Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and Dermaptera were the most abundant orders. Tingidae, Chironomidae, Aphididae and Lygaeidae were the most abundant families. The monthly variation of insect density and richness showed a unimodal pattern, with aboveground insects peaking in August (10 ind·m-2 and 59 species) and ground insects peaking in September (113 individuals per cup and 36 species). A total of 41 bird species belonging to 21 families and nine orders were recorded in the regular observation with the monthly dynamic peaked in the months of July to October. Dietary analysis revealed that insects, and weed seeds of Leguminosae and Gramineae were the main foods consumed by airfield bird. Pearson correlation analysis showed monthly bird individuals significantly and positively related to the total monthly insect individuals, as well as the monthly insect individuals of the orders of Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, Colleoptera and Hemiptera, respectively. Generalized linear model (GLM) showed that monthly dynamics of bird occurrence at Lukou Airport can be well predicted by Orthoptera individuals. Our results demonstrated close relationships between airfield bird occurrence and lawn insects. It would be helpful for reducing airfield bird occurrence by effective insect control measures such as pesticides application and regular mowing.

Key words: water-air interface, Chlamys farreri., aquaculture system, CO2 flux, Sebastes schlegelii