ABSTRACT 7th International Symposium on Environmental Concerns in Rights-of-Way Management
TITLE:	Entomological communities of three landscapes along highway rights-of-way of southern Quebec: effect of mowing frequency on insects abundance and diversity.
AUTHOR(S):	Nancy Champagne Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Québec Jean-Pierre Bourassa - Jean-Pierre_Bourassa@uqtr.uquebec.ca Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Québec
The present study falls under the experimental project of ecological management of the vegetation of the Ministère des transports du Québec, which plans to modify the traditional mowing of the 5 000 km highway rights-of-way and to let the vegetation evolve freely, as that is applied in several countries. In this study, we characterized the entomofauna of frequently mown rights-of-way to check whether the reduction in the mowing frequency had an influence on diversity and abundance of Insects. We collected, during the summer of 1999, in three different sites representing the landscapes most frequently crossed by a highway in southern Quebec (agricultural, forest and suburban), many thousand insects belonging to more than one hundred families. Some of these families seem to be good indicators of the quality of that environment and will have to be followed later on. Two other seasons of sampling will take place during summers 2000 and 2001 and the combination of these two seasons results will make it possible to draw some interesting conclusions. Ref#: Abs-1-143