A biodiversity-friendly rotational grazing system enhancing flower-visiting insect assemblages while maintaining animal and grassland productivity

Abstract

Highlights1. Biodiversity-friendly rotational grazing (BR) was applied using cattle and sheep 2. The BR increased the flower cover of the vegetation community 3. Butterfly and bumblebee abundance and diversity increased under BR as did cattle 4. Ground beetles were not affected by grazer species or BR 5. Herbage mass and animal performances were comparable with continuous grazing AbstractGrazing management is an important tool to preserve insect biodiversity. Although literature has discussed the importance of grazing pressure adjustment to support grassland insect communities for the ecosystem services they provide, little has been published on the economic sustainability of such management adjustments to date. This study compared continuous grazing (CG) to an innovative rotational grazing system (the biodiversity-friendly rotation -BR), where a subplot was excluded from grazing for two months during the main flowering period. The effects of grazing two different species (cattle and sheep) within both systems were also evaluated. The aims were to assess the effects on butterfly, bumblebee, and ground beetle assemblages, along with the impact on herbage mass and animal performance. The BR enhanced both the abundance and species richness of flower-visiting insect assemblages and it was observed that cattle provided better results than sheep grazing. A multivariate redundancy analysis highlighted that most of the flower-visiting species (including almost all the endangered and locally rare species) were favoured by BR-cattle treatment, mainly due to the high percentage of flower cover and sward heterogeneity involved in this treatment. However, grazing Page 3 of 29 system and grazer species did not affect ground beetle species richness or abundance. Moreover, herbage mass and animal performance (live weight and body condition score) were comparable between CG and BR throughout the grazing season. The BR could be a useful management system to enhance grassland flower-visiting insect assemblages whilst meeting farm production objectives, especially in protected environments where insect conservation is a major target.

A 5‐year rotational grazing changes the botanical composition of sub‐alpine and alpine grasslands

“…However, the effects produced by the implementation of GMP on plant diversity and botanical composition were not taken into consideration in previous research. Actually, some studies assessed the effects produced by RGS on plant and animal biodiversity, soil properties, vegetation cover, animal productivity and forage selection and quality (Jacobo, Rodríguez, Bartoloni, & Deregibus, ; Morris, Clarke, & Rispin, ; Ravetto Enri, Probo, et al., ; Teague, Provenza, Kreuter, Steffens, & Barnes, ; Wrage, Strodtoff, Cuchillo, Isselstein, & Kayser, ), but were not conducted on high‐elevation grasslands. No research, to our knowledge, has been carried out on the medium‐term effects (e.g.…”

Impacts et services issus des élevages européens

“…Du côté de la faune, la richesse spécifique des communautés d'arthropodes a été particulièrement étudiée (Ravetto-Enri et al, 2017) : elle est favorisée par un pâturage à faible niveau de chargement animal. Comme pour la flore, la variation de richesse spécifique des communautés d'arthropodes ne reflète cependant que partiellement les variations de leur composition observée le long d'un gradient d'intensification.…”

Opportunities to improve the future of South Australia’s terrestrial biodiversity

“…Different government and private agencies could promote all, or at least some of the following in the course of their normal operations to provide real biodiversity benefits. For example, emphasis on the development of more biodiversity-friendly agriculture that spares native habitats (Phalan et al 2011) is an obvious course of action -this includes land-sparing approaches (Dotta et al 2015;Hulme et al 2013;Kamp et al 2015;Kremen 2015;Williams et al 2017), restoration of adjacent native vegetation to promote the persistence of wild pollinators (Carvalheiro Luísa et al 2011), rotational grazing (Ravetto Enri et al 2017;Waters et al 2016), reducing stocking density (Dorrough et al 2006;Fynn and O'Connor 2001;Jansen and Healey 2003;Jansen and Robertson 2001), payments for ecosystem services (Smith and Sullivan 2014), agricultural intensification instead of expansion (Tilman et al 2011;Tscharntke et al 2005) in areas already highly compromised (to reduce the incentives to clear even more land for agriculture), among many other approaches (Jackson 1997).…”