Associations between plant and pollinator communities under grassland restoration respond mainly to landscape connectivity

Rotchés‐Ribalta, Roser; Winsa, Marie; Roberts, Stuart P. M.; Öckinger, Erik

doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13232

Cited by 32 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Indeed, post-restoration community completeness should depend on both spatial and temporal constraints, e.g., site connectivity, species dispersal abilities and the time since restoration, as these are among the most important factors for re-establishment after restoration (Jones et al 2018;Rotchés-Ribalta et al 2018). Species with poor dispersal abilities are also known to be part of dark diversity more often (Riibak et al 2015;Moeslund et al 2017;Miličić et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community completeness as a measure of restoration success: multiple-study comparisons across ecosystems and ecological groups

2020

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When restoring habitat for biodiversity, the most effective outcome will be achieved by restoration projects which target several organism groups or ecosystem types. Such integrated approaches require direct comparisons among different ecological communities while evaluating success of restoration. The Community Completeness Index (CCI) is a recently developed metric that allows such comparisons by accounting for both present and absent but otherwise suitable taxa. We empirically evaluated the applicability of CCI for assessing the outcome of ecological restoration. We analyzed how species richness and the completeness of ecological communities recover after restoration, for different ecological groups and ecosystem types, and how it develops over time after restoration. Analyses were performed on 18 datasets with per site presence-absence data from Northern Europe. Each dataset represented one of the three habitat types (mire, forest, grassland) and different ecological groups (plants, flying insects, epigeic invertebrates). Datasets contained pristine, degraded and restored sites. We calculated the dark diversity and subsequently CCI based on species co-occurrences. Our multiple-study analyses revealed that CCI of grassland plant communities increased faster after restoration than invertebrate communities or plant communities in forests and mires. In addition, flying insect communities demonstrated significantly highest CCI in pristine mires. Some results were significant only for richness but not for CCI indicating species pool effect. Finally, completeness and species richness of restored communities increased with time since restoration. As such, our study demonstrated that CCI is a useful tool in evaluating restoration success across different organism groups and ecosystem types.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community completeness as a measure of restoration success: multiple-study comparisons across ecosystems and ecological groups

2020

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“…Instead, the lack of effects of connectivity highlights the importance of local habitat factors in link realization and overall success of plant-pollinator network restoration. The local plant community is an important determinant of pollinator communities 35 , but pollinators are highly mobile organisms, making rapid recovery of pollinator communities and plant-pollinator interaction networks possible after restoration, even in relatively isolated grasslands. The rapid recovery of interaction networks is also made possible by the observed high turnover of co-occurring species and relatively high degree of rewiring, indicating a behavioural plasticity in terms of shifting diets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To study plant-pollinator interactions in relation to pasture management history and connectivity, we used previously established site system 32,35 . In the current study we collected plant-pollinator network data which is new and complementary to the plant and pollinator community data used in our previous studies.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using a space-for-time substitution, we included 10 abandoned, 18 restored and 10 continuously grazed semi-natural pastures of dry or mesic type, where the abandoned pastures represent the state before restoration, and the continuously grazed pastures represent the reference state (Fig. 1) 32,35 . The pastures were selected along a connectivity gradient to continuously grazed semi-natural grasslands in the surrounding landscapes, and restored pastures ranged in time since restoration from 2–16 years.

Figure 1Map of the study area in south-central Sweden, including 38 semi-natural pastures of different management states (abandoned, restored and continuously grazed) in landscapes with contrasting connectivity to continuously grazed pastures.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Habitat connectivity and the time since restoration are key variables that could affect the re-assembly of interaction networks. We have previously found that the restoration success of Swedish grassland plant and pollinator communities and their associations is highly dependent on site connectivity 34,35 and on the dispersal ability of both pollinators and plants 32,34 . In addition, plant trait composition in restored sites changed gradually with increasing time since restoration 32 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pollinator foraging flexibility mediates rapid plant-pollinator network restoration in semi-natural grasslands

Noreika

Bartomeus

Winsa

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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We examined how plant-pollinator interactions were affected by time since habitat restoration and landscape connectivity by comparing plant-pollinator networks in restored, abandoned and continuously grazed semi-natural pastures in south-central Sweden. We measured richness of flowering plants and pollinators, and local plant-pollinator network characteristics including species composition as well as the number and identity of interactions, allowing a deeper understanding of species and interaction beta diversity. Pollinator richness and abundance were highest in restored grasslands. They successfully resembled continuously grazed grasslands. However, the turnover of interactions was extremely high among pasture categories (0.99) mainly due to high turnover of plant (0.74) and pollinator species (0.81). Among co-occurring plant and pollinator species, the turnover of interactions (0.66) was attributable mainly to differences in the number of links and to a lesser extent to species true rewiring (~0.17). Connectivity and time since restoration had no effect on the measured network properties. We show that plant-pollinator interactions can be rapidly restored even in relatively isolated grasslands. This is partly due to flexibility of most pollinators to establish interactions with the available flowering plants and relatively high species interaction rewiring, indicating that pollinators behavioural plasticity allow them to shift diets to adapt to new situations.

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Long‐term restoration success of insect herbivore communities in seminatural grasslands: a functional approach

Neff

Resch

Marty

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

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Seminatural grasslands are important biodiversity hotspots, but they are increasingly degraded by intensive agriculture. Grassland restoration is considered to be promising in halting the ongoing loss of biodiversity, but this evaluation is mostly based on plant communities. Insect herbivores contribute substantially to grassland biodiversity and to the provisioning of a variety of ecosystem functions. However, it is unclear how they respond to different measures that are commonly used to restore seminatural grasslands from intensively used agricultural land. We studied the long‐term success of different restoration techniques, which were originally targeted at reestablishing seminatural grassland plant communities, for herbivorous insect communities on taxonomic as well as functional level. Therefore, we sampled insect communities 22 yr after the establishment of restoration measures. These measures ranged from harvest and removal of biomass to removal of the topsoil layer and subsequent seeding of plant propagules. We found that insect communities in restored grasslands had higher taxonomic and functional diversity compared to intensively managed agricultural grasslands and were more similar in composition to target grasslands. Restoration measures including topsoil removal proved to be more effective, in particular in restoring species characterized by functional traits susceptible to intensive agriculture (e.g., large‐bodied species). Our study shows that long‐term success in the restoration of herbivorous insect communities of seminatural grasslands can be achieved by different restoration measures and that more invasive approaches that involve the removal of the topsoil layer are more effective. We attribute these restoration successes to accompanying changes in the plant community, resulting in bottom‐up control of the herbivore community. Our results are of critical importance for management decisions aiming to restore multi‐trophic communities, their functional composition and consequently the proliferation of ecosystem functions.

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Associations between plant and pollinator communities under grassland restoration respond mainly to landscape connectivity

Cited by 32 publications

References 41 publications

Community completeness as a measure of restoration success: multiple-study comparisons across ecosystems and ecological groups

Community completeness as a measure of restoration success: multiple-study comparisons across ecosystems and ecological groups

Pollinator foraging flexibility mediates rapid plant-pollinator network restoration in semi-natural grasslands

Long‐term restoration success of insect herbivore communities in seminatural grasslands: a functional approach

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