Abstract

It is well understood that agricultural expansion and associated loss of semi-natural habitat in the landscape are major drivers for the marked decline in biodiversity. While conserving remaining semi-natural habitat patches is essential to reverse ongoing biodiversity declines, increasing focus has also been put on diversifying cropland itself by increasing landscape crop diversity as a measure of compositional heterogeneity, and reducing field sizes as a measure of configurational heterogeneity. Both these cropland diversification approaches have shown promise to enhance biodiversity in the year of sampling, but it is unknown whether legacies of crop diversity in the landscape promote biodiversity by building up arthropod communities over time. We selected 14 faba bean fields in landscapes dominated by cropland. The fields were chosen along three gradients: landscape crop di-versity of the year of sampling (2017), landscape crop diversity of the previous year (2016) and mean field size in landscapes. Using pitfall traps, we show that the carabid beetle species richness is higher in landscapes with higher crop diversity in the previous year. Especially, granivorous carabid beetles benefitted from legacies of crop diversity. Rove beetles were more abundant and genus rich in landscapes with larger field sizes, while spiders were not responding to any of the landscape variables. A diversity of crops in the landscape and their associated weed communities could provide more diverse food resources and shelter habitats, which build populations of carabid beetle species over time. There is a need to explore the effects of agri-environmental schemes across multiple years to better understand legacy effects, and to structure sustainable agricultural landscapes.

Keywords

Landscape composition; Landscape configuration; Spiders; Staphylinids; Ground beetles; Sustainable agriculture; Carry-over effects; Functional traits

Published in

Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment
2022, Volume: 340, article number: 108191
Publisher: ELSEVIER

SLU Authors

• Raderschall, Chloë

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg

• Lundin, Ola

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Aguilera Nuñez, Guillermo

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Bommarco, Riccardo

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

SLU Plant Protection Network


Sustainable Development Goals

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.108191

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119953