Invertebrate species present in a corn crop may or may not interact, fulfilling various roles. Some of them are phytophagous consuming parts of the plant, others have a carnivorous diet consuming other animal organisms and others are indifferent. Starting from the various roles that invertebrates can play, we decided to analyze the situation on these categories, in a maize crop (in monoculture) in Timis County, for a period of 2 years, respectively 2019 and 2020. Thus, bearing in mind the fact that the phytophagous species play a harmful role for the plant, the carnivorous ones can be useful by consuming the phytophagous ones and the indifferent ones do not have a defined role, we quantified all the species found both terrestrial and in the soil. We thus found that most of the species present were phytophagous. Of the 18 invertebrate species found, 61.1% were phytophagous, 22% carnivorous and 16.6% indifferent to plants or animal organisms present. In the underground environment, 8 species of invertebrates were identified, and in the terrestrial environment, the rest, 12 species remained. Predominant among the phytophagous species were the insects Diabrotica virgifera and Aphis maydis. Among the carnivores, the arthropod species Argiope bruennichii and Coccinella sp were noted, and among the indifferent ones, the annelid Lumbricus terestris and the arthropod Formica pratensis predominated. Trophic or accidental connections were observed between invertebrate species present in the analyzed corn field. Thus, trophic connections were observed between arachnid, carabids and coccinelids as predator species and many phytophagous insect species present on plants. In conclusion, we can mention that there are many categories of species in the field with analyzed corn, and the cause could be the practice of the system in monoculture, which favours the excessive multiplication of all existing invertebrates in the soil but also on plants.

Invertebrate, phytophagous, carnivores, trophic connection, maize

biology

Presentation: poster