Fire, grazing, and climate shape plant-grasshopper interactions in a tallgrass prairie

In this study, we asked whether the environmental factors of temperature, precipitation, and land management (grazing and prescribed burning) were associated with changes in plant-grasshopper network modularity and grasshopper diet generality in a tallgrass prairie. DNA barcoding was used to identify plant species in the grasshopper gut contents, characterizing diets of 26 grasshopper species. We combined our diet dataset with long term plant and grasshopper community composition datasets to assemble putative plant-grasshopper networks across 6 watersheds and over 13-19 years. The 6 watersheds had different management regimes: varying both in presence of bison, and frequency of burning