Arthropod communities in pastured-poultry agroecosystems

While demand for ecologically sustainable and humanely raised poultry products increases nationwide, the ecological impacts of large-scale pastured-poultry operations remains largely unexplored. In particular, there is scarce information on how pasture-raised layer hens with daily outdoor access to pasture impact arthropod communities. As pastured-poultry operations continue to increase in numbers and as more hens are integrated into agroecosystems at large scales, it remains critical to evaluate the ecological sustainability of such production systems and their impacts on arthropod communities.

In order to determine the impact of pasture-raised hens on ground-dwelling arthropod communities, we deployed pitfalls across a network of ten pastured-poultry farms in Central and Western Kentucky across four sampling events (Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, and Spring 2024). Pitfalls were deployed at varying distances (10m, 15m, 25m, 50m) from a fixed barn to further explore how distance (a proxy for poultry activity density) influenced ground-dwelling arthropod abundance.

Preliminary analysis suggests that mean ground-dwelling arthropod abundance decreased with increasing distance to fixed barns (p<0.001). At the order level, this trend is observed in ground-dwelling Hymenoptera (mostly ants; p<0.001) and Hemipterans (p=0.002). These preliminary results suggest that poultry activity density (i.e., fecal deposition) might have a bottom-up effect on some arthropod groups in pastured-poultry settings.