Dietary overlap of grasshoppers on sandhill rangeland in northeastern Colorado.

Overlap in the diets of 14 species of grasshoppers on mixed-grass prairie in northeastern Colorado was estimated by microscopic examination of crop contents. Food availability estimates, taken by a weight-estimate method, facilitated the determination of food preferences. Two cases of high overlap in diets and period of habitat occupancy occurred between species which consumed equal or almost equal numbers of different foods (foodniche breadth) and had almost identical foraging behavior. The first case occurred early in the season between Xanthippus corallipes and Arphia conspersa with foodniche breadths of 14 and 11, respectively. The second case occurred later in the season between Amphitornus coloradus and Trachyrhachys kiowa both of which have foodniche breadths of 6. The amount of movement between plants while feeding was equal or almost equal in both cases, thus we observed high dietary overlap between species with equal ecological efficiencies. Dietary overlap between the 14 grasshopper species decreased as foodniche dimensions increased and the grasshopper population as a whole utilized each food resource approximately proportional to its relative abundance. Factors influencing the interpretation and importance of dietary overlap in this study included 1. non-synchronous life cycles, 2. seasonal changes in diets and food preferences, 3. complexity of the food resources, 4. variations in foodniche dimensions among grasshopper species, and 5. variations in diets between males and females within a species. Our findings agree with MacArthur and Levins theory that the number of competing species which can coexist is proportional to the total range of the environment divided by the niche breadth of the species.