Differences in grasshopper genus shares showed no clear linear trend across six Konza watersheds in 1997–2020

We tested whether grasshopper genus shares became more similar across six fixed, ungrazed Konza Prairie watersheds in 1997–2020. The balanced panel has 576 samples, four 200-sweep samples per watershed-year, and 35,785 included individuals. We pooled species and genus-only names by genus. We calculated the mean squared composition distance across 15 pairs each year, with a finite-count correction that is unbiased under independent multinomial catches. The distance changed by −0.0056 per decade, with a 95% four-year residual block interval of −0.0330 to +0.0222. Negative change indicates greater similarity. Date models gave small positive slopes, also with intervals across zero. Raw distance, Bray–Curtis distance, equal-count rarefaction, visit subsets, label checks and removal of each watershed did not resolve the direction. The mean count correction rose from 0.0057 in the first six years to 0.0151 in the last six years. The result does not establish stable communities: the main interval permits substantial change in either direction. It applies to captured genera at these fixed locations. It does not test stable species composition, correct field detection, or identify a cause. The package preserves source data, provenance, all pair-year values, code, figures, bootstrap draws and reproduction checks.

grasshopper · community composition · Konza Prairie · spatial diversity · genus shares · sweep sampling · finite sample bias · reproducible analysis