KBS023:Insect Population Dynamics on the Main Cropping System Experiment

Plant dwelling insect occurrence in the LTER main site (all treatments) of the KBS-LTER has been recorded since 1989 and in the successional and forest sites since 1993. The effort has focused on characterizing the temporal and spatial abundance and diversity of a set of insects representative of a higher order insect trophic level, the herbivore predators. The insect database contains more than 400,000 records and consists of counts of adult insects of fourteen species of Coccinellidae, one species of Chrysopidae, and one species of Lampyridae from 30 sample sites in each of the seven treatments in the LTER Main Site. The standard method used to measure these organisms is a yellow sticky trap. Sampling is conducted weekly during the growing season as described in the sampling protocol.