McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America.
United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory, Sidney, Montana, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Aug 21;19(8):e0308263. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308263. eCollection 2024.
Electrical transmission rights-of-way are ubiquitous and critical infrastructure across the landscape. Active vegetation management of these rights-of-way, a necessity to deliver electricity more safely, maintains these landscape features as stages of early successional habitat, a rarity in many regions, making these areas viable movement corridors for many taxa. The goals of this study were to (i) evaluate the effects of different electrical transmission landscape management practices on flowering plant and flower-visiting insect diversity parameters and (ii) generate conservation management inferences for these landscapes. In this study we tested the impact of three vegetation management levels across 18 electrical transmission sites. We evaluated the effects of treatment on bloom abundance and species richness as well as flower-visiting insect abundance and family richness. We identified 76541 flowers/inflorescences across 456 transects, including 188 species in 56 plant families. Additionally, we obtained data on 11361 flower-visitoring insects representing 33 families from 2376 pan trap sets. High vegetation management favored the reduction of coarse woody debris in the sites and harbored the highest level of abundance and richness of both floral resources and flower-visiting insects. We discuss that we can align social and ecological values of rights-of-way, ensuring their sustainability by applying regular and targeted integrated vegetation management. Thus, we can use rights-of-way landscapes not only as an effective management strategy for the delivery of essential human services, but also to provide conservation benefits for wild pollinators.
输电路径无处不在，是景观中的关键基础设施。为了更安全地输送电力，需要对这些路径进行积极的植被管理，这使它们成为早期演替生境的阶段，在许多地区很少见，使这些区域成为许多分类群可行的迁移走廊。本研究的目的是：（i）评估不同的输电路径景观管理实践对开花植物和访花昆虫多样性参数的影响；（ii）为这些景观生成保护管理推论。在这项研究中，我们测试了三种植被管理水平对 18 个输电路径站点的影响。我们评估了处理对开花量和物种丰富度以及访花昆虫数量和科丰富度的影响。我们在 456 条样带上鉴定了 76541 朵花/花序，包括 56 个植物科的 188 个物种。此外，我们从 2376 个诱虫器中获得了 11361 只访花昆虫的数据，代表 33 个科。高植被管理有利于减少站点中的粗木质残体，并拥有最高水平的花卉资源和访花昆虫的丰度和丰富度。我们讨论了我们可以调整输电路径的社会和生态价值，通过定期和有针对性的综合植被管理来确保其可持续性。因此，我们不仅可以将输电路径景观用作提供基本人类服务的有效管理策略，还可以为野生传粉媒介提供保护效益。
