Phytoseiidae, A.Berlese, 1916

Tixier, M. - S., Lopes, I., Blanc, G., Dedieu, J. - L. & Kreiter, S., 2014, Phytoseiid Mite Diversity (Acari: Mesostigmata) And Assessment Of Their Spatial Distribution In French Apple Orchards, Acarologia 54 (1), pp. 97-111 : 106

Phytoseiidae distribution in apple orchards

A high and significant correlation was observed between log(m) and log(S 2) (R 2 = 0.96, P <0.0001), allowing to use the indices of Taylor’s law to characterise Phytoseiidae distribution. The slope value was 1.26 (Standard Error = 0.02), showing an aggregative distribution. Table 5 shows the parameters of the regression for different regions (where the number of plots was sufficient to carry out the analysis). In all the regions considered, the slope value was significantly higher than 1 (except in Aquitaine), showing an aggregated distribution. However, sometimes two species were co-occurring in a same plot. It is thus impossible to determine if the distributions of the two species are different. In order to assess the distribution of the three dominant species, only plots where one of these latter species represented 80 % of the densities were considered and then the Taylor’s law was applied. The slope values obtained were significantly higher than 1 for the three species, showing a clear aggregated distribution for all of them (Table 5).