Assessing the relationship between grassland Auchenorrhyncha (Homoptera) and land cover

Associations between grassland Auchenorrhyncha species assemblages and satellite-derived land cover data were investigated with data from 261 sites in forty-nine 1 km British national grid squares in northern England and southern Scotland involving 113 species. Fuzzy classification of species data led to the identification of six assemblages: two related to upland land covers, three to lowland and one with no altitudinal preference. A constrained ordination indicated that the relationship between species assemblages and land cover types was greatest with tilled land and urban cover in the lowland areas and heath grassland and bog in the upland zones. Other land cover types were less important and the classification indicated that a considerable number of species, generally the most abundant, were not strongly related to any specific land cover type. The use of Auchenorrhyncha in monitoring environmental change is likely to be related to observations on assemblage distribution change and in the assessment of habitat diversity within landscapes. The integration and synthesis of remote-sensed cover data with invertebrate species distribution data for the potential investigation of environmental change is discussed.