Varietal and intrafamilial species diversity influence aphid and yellow dwarf virus pressure within mixtures of wheat and barley

Species diversity and varietal diversity within agricultural fields can increase crop resilience to plant pathogens and insect pests. The functional differences between two species in the same family or two varieties of the same species are often less apparent than the differences between species in interfamilial polycultures (e.g., cereal-legume mixtures), but can nevertheless result in yield advantages. Intrafamilial cereal mixtures are grown for their resilience to drought, weeds, and disease in parts of northern Africa, Asia, and Europe, though they were formerly widespread in those regions. Farmers plant multiple cereal species and varieties within the same field, treating the mixture as a single crop. In the northeastern United States, we created mixtures using two varieties of wheat (Triticum aestivum) and two varieties of barley (Hordeum vulgare) to test whether species and varietal diversity would reduce the prevalence of globally important pathogens, the yellow dwarf viruses (..., Experimental design
To examine the effect of intrafamilial species and varietal diversity on aphid populations and YDVs, we created mixtures using four components, including two hard red spring wheat varieties, Marquis and Glenn, and two two-row malting barley varieties, AAC Synergy and Newdale. We selected Marquis and Glenn wheat for their early maturity so that they would mature at approximately the same time as the barley varieties. All varieties were susceptible to barley yellow dwarf virus (McCallum & DePauw 2008, Mergoum et al. 2006, Legge et al. 2014, Legge et al. 2008).
We planted monoculture stands of the four components, all possible two-component mixtures, and the complete four-component mixture for a total of 11 treatments. This design resulted in: four monocultures; a two-component wheat varietal mixture; a two-component barley varietal mixture; four two-component species mixtures of 50% wheat and 50% barley (all possible combinations); and a four-component mixture comp..., , # Varietal and intrafamilial species diversity influence aphid and yellow dwarf virus pressure within mixtures of wheat and barley

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7pvmcvf2j](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7pvmcvf2j)

Dataset contents:

\"aphid_obs_mess.csv\" : 

* Should be read by \"aphid_models.R\" to be analyzed
* This file is all the data collected from aphid observations done at the experimental plot
* columns [AA, AR] are copied over from \"infection_for_model.csv\" to make looking at correlations in the data easier. Because these columns are averages and cumulative sums of the infection data, they only fill 66 rows. The remaining rows for these columns have been left as NA.
* Abbreviations:
* obs_per = observation period day (each observation period is only 1 day long)
* total_plants_in_quadr = the total number of plants counted within the innermost 25cm^2 of each plot
* prop_plants_occupied = the proportion of plants within the innermost 25cm^2 that had at least one aphid on them...