Three years of butterfly surveys across the LTER Main Cropping Systems Experiment show that agricultural plots where 5% of cropland was converted to prairie harbor unique species and have a greater abundance of butterflies than plots without prairie.
As agriculture increases in intensity across the U.S., finding ways to conserve ecological systems while supporting crop production has become critical. Keeping native landscapes connected in the midst of farmland is a great way to support biodiversity. Prairie strips – long strips of retired farmland that are sown with native species – represent a promising way to preserve biodiversity without disrupting food production.
Today, scientists at the KBS LTER are adding to our knowledge about the efficacy of prairie strips. New research from current LTER graduate student Annabelle McCarthy and former LTER graduate student Lindsey Kemmerling highlights previously undiscovered benefits of prairie strips. They used three years of butterfly surveys across a gradient of five land use types, ranging from conservation lands to conventional row crops, to determine how butterfly communities differ based on management practices and the presence of prairie strips.
They found that prairie strips benefit the butterfly community across the entire crop area. Butterfly abundance was higher within prairie strips than anywhere else in the agricultural landscape, and butterfly richness increased as land use intensity decreased. There were also more unique butterfly species in treatments with prairies strips compared to those without.
These results highlight the value of even small conservation measures – like converting at least 5% or more of land into prairie strips among large scale agriculture. KBS LTER provides a critical research facility for understanding how conservation measures such as prairie strips can be integrated into farming practices to benefit multiple stakeholders.
The research also received the Journal Early Career Entomologist Award from the Royal Entomological Society, an honor given to the best articles in Royal Entomological Society Journals led by early career entomologists, published during 2021-2023. In their review of the paper, the judges noted that “the work also demonstrates a really nice example of the value of long term ecological research sites, especially their role in providing new experimental contexts for future research.”