Date: 11/9/24 6:29 am From: Neubig, Richard <rneubig...> Subject: [birders] Native plants, caterpillars, and birds
All,
My wife is reading Doug Tallamy’s new book on Oaks. He cites some particularly scary data. I know I’m preaching to the choir but we should all be planting natives and get our friends to do so also.
First in a study (2018) on how non-natives have replaced natives in hedgerows (think honeysuckle), the data are striking. “novel (non-native) hedgerows had 68% fewer caterpillar species, 91% fewer caterpillars, and 96% less caterpillar biomass than native hedgerows.”
Also, in yards with different extents of non-native shrubs and other plants, the viability of bird survival was strikingly related to the fraction of native shrubs – presumably due to the very low food insect mass on non-natives. If a yard had less than 70% natives, Carolina Chickadees had much smaller brood sizes and couldn’t even maintain replacement levels of breeding.
This shows how even modest replacement of native plants by non-natives can have a major impact.
Scary!
Rick
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