Effects of mowing and pesticide spraying on the insect community in the lawn of airport airfield — a case study of Ningbo Lishe International Airport

Insect communities in airport turf zones play a critical role in bird strike prevention strategies. Although mowing and pesticide applications are standard practices for insect suppression in flight areas, their ecological impacts on arthropod communities remain understudied. This study conducted field surveys (March to November 2022) in Ningbo Lishe International Airport to examine insect community composition and diversity dynamics under mowing and pesticide treatments within flight area turf. A total of 11 226 insect specimens were collected, belonging to 141 species across 66 families and 9 orders, with Hemiptera exhibiting the highest species count (42 species) and abundance (4 878 individuals). α-Diversity analysis demonstrated that: seasonally, the Shannon-Wiener and Simpson indices peaked in autumn, while species richness, abundance, species count, and biomass reached maximum values in summer; among treatments, both mowing and pesticide spraying significantly reduced species number, abundance, biomass, Shannon-Wiener index, and richness index, with interaction effects observed between the two measures for abundance and biomass; across seasonal treatments, pesticide spraying consistently exerted stronger impacts on abundance than mowing, while autumn mowing showed greater influence on biomass reduction than that of pesticide spraying. Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) based on the CNESS dissimilarity matrix revealed more pronounced treatment effects on insect community structure in spring and autumn than that in summer, particularly in altering dominant species distributions. This research elucidates the impacts of mowing and pesticide applications on the composition and temporal dynamics of turf insect communities at Ningbo Lishe International Airport, providing foundational data for developing targeted insect suppression strategies in airport ecosystems.