European Union tree density limits do not reflect bat diversity in wood-pastures

Wood, Heather; Lindborg, Regina; Jakobsson, Simon

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2017.04.001

Cited by 14 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This provides further support to the stance that it is important to consider the impact of regional variation in large-scale studies of land use and land-use change 29 , and to avoid careless extrapolation of measured biodiversity responses across multiple landscapes or regions. Agri-environmental schemes provide a good example where national or international guidelines for conservation management can sometimes be ineffective at local and landscape scales 30 , and in some cases may even limit biodiversity for some organism groups 31 , 32 . Furthermore, our results also indicate that historical context in the form of variation in both the pre-change landscape conditions and the trajectory of land-use change that has occurred can affect measures of biodiversity within a focal grassland, even in landscapes that may appear similar in the present day.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Super-regional land-use change and effects on the grassland specialist flora

et al. 2018

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Habitat loss through land-use change is the most pressing threat to biodiversity worldwide. European semi-natural grasslands have suffered an ongoing decline since the early twentieth century, but we have limited knowledge of how grassland loss has affected biodiversity across large spatial scales. We quantify land-use change over 50–70 years across a 175,000 km2 super-region in southern Sweden, identifying a widespread loss of open cover and a homogenisation of landscape structure, although these patterns vary considerably depending on the historical composition of the landscape. Analysing species inventories from 46,796 semi-natural grasslands, our results indicate that habitat loss and degradation have resulted in a decline in grassland specialist plant species. Local factors are the best predictors of specialist richness, but the historical landscape predicts present-day richness better than the contemporary landscape. This supports the widespread existence of time-lagged biodiversity responses, indicating that further species losses could occur in the future.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Super-regional land-use change and effects on the grassland specialist flora

et al. 2018

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“…The pastures were individually fenced, of which a few belonged to the same properties, situated in the mosaic landscape. Although the studied woody pastures were rather small on average, and in particular birds and bats typically use multiple habitat types in mosaic landscapes such as our study area, the woody pastures have relatively characteristic species assemblages (Jakobsson and Lindborg 2017;Wood et al 2017).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Land use intensification leads to landscape simplification (Landis 2017) with homogenized biological communities as a consequence (Gámez-Virués et al 2015). Woody pastures, consisting of a variety of grazed semi-natural grassland habitats with some tree cover (Bergmeier et al 2010), contribute significantly to landscape heterogeneity and biodiversity (Lentini et al 2012;Wood et al 2017). Woody pastures have typically been shaped by a long history of silvo-pastoral management, where the combination of grazing and presence of old trees enables co-existence of grassland species and species associated with old growth forests (Bergmeier et al 2010;Dorresteijn et al 2013;Garbarino & Bergmeier 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Multiple taxonomic groups therefore benefit from the heterogeneous structure of woody pastures, among which species richness and composition of plants, bats and birds have been the most studied (e.g. Fischer et al 2010;Jakobsson & Lindborg 2015;Wood et al 2017). However, research suggests diverging responses to pasture tree densities across taxa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(ii) In contrast to species richness (cf. Lindborg 2015, 2017;Wood et al 2017), the functional response of bats and birds is more strongly linked to other structural vegetation attributes in and around the woody pastures than to tree density (Jung et al 2012;Barbaro et al 2014;Cisneros et al 2015), whereas the functional response of plants is mainly affected by tree density (Rolo et al 2016). Finally, (iii) traits belonging to the same functional groups (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contrasting multi-taxa functional diversity patterns along vegetation structure gradients of woody pastures

et al. 2020

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Woody pastures represent keystone habitats for biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, contributing to increased resource availability, landscape heterogeneity and structural variability. High taxonomic diversity is closely linked to vegetation structure in woody pastures, but examining functional characteristics of species assemblages can shed more light on the ecological mechanisms driving divergent responses to habitat characteristics and help guide good management practices. To this end, we use a multi-taxa approach to investigate how plant, bat and bird taxonomic and functional diversity are affected by pasture tree and shrub density, structural complexity and proximate forest cover in southern Sweden. In particular, we use a trait exclusion approach to estimate the sensitivity of diversity-environment relationships to specific traits. We found little congruence between corresponding diversity metrics across taxa. Bird species richness responded stronger to environmental variables than functional diversity metrics, whereas the functional response to the environment was stronger than the taxonomic response among plants and bats. While increasing tree densities increased the taxonomic diversity of all three taxa, a simultaneous functional response was only evident for plants. Contrasting measures of vegetation structure affected different aspects of functional diversity across taxa, driven by different traits. For plants and birds, traits linked to resource use contributed particularly to the functional response, whereas body mass had stronger influence on bat functional diversity metrics. Multi-taxa functional approaches are essential to understand the effects of woody pasture structural attributes on biodiversity, and ultimately inform management guidelines to preserve the biological values in woody pastures.

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