Grasshoppers, other arthropods, plant, and soil data from Konza Prairie bison grazing lawns

1. We contrast the response of arthropod abundance and composition to bison grazing lawns during a drought and non-drought year, with an emphasis on acridid grasshoppers, an important grassland herbivore.

2. Grazing lawns are grassland areas where regular grazing by mammalian herbivores creates patches of short-statured, high nutrient vegetation. Grazing lawns are predictable microsites that modify microclimate, plant structure, community composition, and nutrient availability, with likely repercussions for arthropod communities.

3. One year of our study occurred during an extreme drought. Drought mimics some of the effects of mammalian grazers: decreasing above-ground plant biomass while increasing plant foliar % nitrogen.

4. We sampled arthropods and nutrient availability on and nearby (“off”) ten bison-grazed grazing lawns in a tallgrass prairie in NE Kansas. Total grasshopper abundance was higher on grazing lawns and the magnitude of this difference increased in the wetter ...