TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kurze, Susanne
A1  - Heinken, Thilo
A1  - Fartmann, Thomas
T1  - Nitrogen enrichment in host plants increases the mortality of common Lepidoptera species
JF  - Oecologia
N2  - The recent decline of Lepidoptera species strongly correlates with the increasing intensification of agriculture in Western and Central Europe. However, the effects of changed host-plant quality through agricultural fertilization on this insect group remain largely unexplored. For this reason, we tested the response of six common butterfly and moth species to host-plant fertilization using fertilizer quantities usually applied in agriculture. The larvae of the study species Coenonympha pamphilus, Lycaena phlaeas, Lycaena tityrus, Pararge aegeria, Rivula sericealis and Timandra comae were distributed according to a split-brood design to three host-plant treatments comprising one control treatment without fertilization and two fertilization treatments with an input of 150 and 300kgNha(-1)year(-1), respectively. In L.tityrus, we used two additional fertilization treatments with an input of 30 and 90kgNha(-1)year(-1), respectively. Fertilization increased the nitrogen concentration of both host-plant species, Rumex acetosella and Poa pratensis, and decreased the survival of larvae in all six Lepidoptera species by at least one-third, without clear differences between sorrel- and grass-feeding species. The declining survival rate in all species contradicts the well-accepted nitrogen-limitation hypothesis, which predicts a positive response in species performance to dietary nitrogen content. In contrast, this study presents the first evidence that current fertilization quantities in agriculture exceed the physiological tolerance of common Lepidoptera species. Our results suggest that (1) the negative effect of plant fertilization on Lepidoptera has previously been underestimated and (2) that it contributes to the range-wide decline of Lepidoptera.
KW  - Agricultural fertilization
KW  - Global change
KW  - Host-plant quality
KW  - Nitrogen-limitation hypothesis
KW  - Rearing experiment
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-018-4266-4
SN  - 0029-8549
SN  - 1432-1939
VL  - 188
IS  - 4
SP  - 1227
EP  - 1237
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  -