Small-scale agricultural landscapes promote spider and ground beetle densities by offering suitable overwintering sites

Gallé, Róbert; Császár, Péter; Makra, Tímea; Gallé‐Szpisjak, Nikolett; Ladányi, Zsuzsanna; Torma, Attila; Ingle, Kapilkumar Nivrutti; Szilassi, Péter

doi:10.1007/s10980-018-0677-1

Cited by 55 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In North America, edge density appears to have similar effects on aphid predators in cereal crops, with more chrysomelids, nabids, and overall higher aphid enemy richness in fine-grained landscapes [15,16]. However, results are inconsistent for some taxa, including coccinellids in soybeans and cereal grains [15,16,[20][21][22] and spiders [23][24][25][26] and carabids [13,22,24,27] in wheat and other crops.…”

Section: Grain Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, some studies have utilized landscapes where composition and configuration are uncorrelated to test their relative strengths. In these cases, results are mixed, with some studies finding configuration effects to be stronger than those of composition [13,37,39], and others the opposite [25,30,31]. Clearly both components of landscape heterogeneity need to be accounted for, and it appears likely that in many landscapes composition and configuration contribute additively or interactively to pest suppression.…”

Section: Relative Strength Of Compositional and Configurational Metricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predicting Landscape Configuration Effects on Agricultural Pest Suppression

Haan

Zhang

Landis

2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

168

115

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Arthropod predators and parasitoids attack crop pests, providing a valuable ecosystem service. The amount of noncrop habitat surrounding crop fields influences pest suppression, but synthesis of new studies suggests that the spatial configuration of crops and other habitats is similarly important. Natural enemies are often more abundant in fine-grained agricultural landscapes comprising smaller patches and can increase or decrease with the connectivity of crop fields to other habitats. Partitioning organisms by traits has emerged as a promising way to predict the strength and direction of these effects. Furthermore, our ability to predict configurational effects will depend on understanding the potential for indirect effects among trophic levels and the relationship between arthropod dispersal capability and the spatial scale of underlying landscape structure. Landscape Structure Influences Pest Suppression in Crop FieldsIn agricultural landscapes, predatory and parasitic arthropods suppress herbivorous arthropod populations, providing an essential ecosystem service valued at billions of dollars annually [1]. In recent decades researchers have begun to identify factors driving the abundance of natural enemies (see Glossary), pests, and the effectiveness of pest suppression in crop fields, with the aim of designing and managing agricultural landscapes to maximize this and other services [2][3][4][5]. Positive outcomes from enhanced pest suppression could include greater crop yields, reduced pesticide use, and increased arthropod diversity in agricultural landscapes. Arthropod communities in crop fields are influenced by the landscape that surrounds them: on their own, crop fields are unsuitable for some beneficial insects because they are usually monocultures and undergo frequent disturbance. This means that other nearby habitats may be especially important for determining which arthropods colonize farm fields. Most research on how landscape structure influences pest suppression has focused on effects of landscape composition (i.e., amounts of habitat). In general, seminatural habitats can provide natural enemies with resources including food, overwintering habitat, nest sites, and refuge from agricultural disturbance, allowing them to survive and then colonize crop fields to exploit the herbivores that accumulate there [3]. Pest suppression is generally thought to increase when crop fields are surrounded by more noncrop or seminatural habitat. However, while this occurs in some circumstances, the effects of landscape composition on pest suppression overall are inconsistent, varying among systems and organisms [4].Beyond composition, there is also variation in landscape configuration [6]. Multiple lines of reasoning suggest that configurational aspects of landscape structure should affect pest suppression. First, since there is spillover of beneficial organisms along interfaces between habitat patches [7], configurational variables such as patch size, shape, amount of shared edge, and connectivity should influence...

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Section: Grain Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Relative Strength Of Compositional and Configurational Metricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Landscape Configuration Effects on Agricultural Pest Suppression

Haan

Zhang

Landis

2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

168

115

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“…mowing or grazing) of grasslands leaves little standing vegetation and litter into the winter for species that overwinter in these substrates. A variety of other non-cropped linear landscape elements, such as road verges, flower rich field margins or hedgerows have also been shown to be important for overwintering (Ramsden et al, 2015; Gallé et al 2018), and canals are also likely to fulfil this function.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning old foes into new allies – harnessing drainage canals for biodiversity conservation in desiccated novel ecosystems

Tölgyesi

Torma

Bátori

et al. 2020

Preprint

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22 1. Drainage canals are ubiquitous components of agricultural landscapes worldwide. 23 Although canals have greatly contributed to biodiversity loss by desiccating wetlands, they 24 have recently attracted conservation attention due to their potential to function as refugia for 25 native wetland-dependent species in intensively managed landscapes. However, their 26 conservation role in complex landscapes comprising a mosaic of agricultural and desiccated 27 semi-natural habitats, on which canals still pose a heavy burden, is unknown. Improved 28 understanding of drainage canals and related biodiversity in these landscapes could help 29 unlock their potential and support synergistic land management for nature conservation and 30 water management. 31 2. We applied a multitaxon approach, including plants, butterflies, true bugs, spiders and 32 birds, to (1) assess the conservation value of drainage canals in a heavily drained European 33 lowland region, (2) to test landscape-level and local canal parameters for aiding prioritization 34 among canal types, and (3) to propose a reconciliation-based management framework that 35 suits the interest of all stakeholders. 36 3. We found that drainage canals concentrate more species across most taxa than 37 adjacent semi-natural habitats, owing to the micro-environmental heterogeneity and the 38 comparatively low management intensity in the canals. The species-concentrating capacity is 39 particularly high in canals that traverse semi-natural habitats, although agricultural canals also 40 support remarkable species diversity. However, agricultural canals are important dispersal 41 corridors for invasive plants, which may negatively affect native species. Canal size has little 42 effect on biodiversity but habitat stress is an important determinant. The higher the stress (due 43 to sandiness and salinity), the higher is the added value of canals to landscape-wide 44 biodiversity. 45 Synthesis and applications. We provide evidence that drainage canals can harbour 46 surprisingly high levels of biodiversity and should therefore be recognized as important novel 47 ecosystems with high conservation value, even within semi-natural habitats. Canals have 48 previously been considered detrimental to nature conservation due to their association with 49 loss of wetlands. However, by reducing water loss with reversible obstructions, controlling 50 invasive species and applying specific conservation measures, they may be turned into 51 conservation allies without compromising long-term interests of water management and 52 agricultural land use. 53 54

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“…We found that the grassland component of forest-steppes has higher species richness of spiders than pastures, and we found differences in species composition of the two habitat types for all taxa based on the multivariate analyses. The role of road verges in maintaining arthropod biodiversity within intensively managed landscape is increasingly recognised (Schaffers et al 2012;Reck and van der Ree 2015), as they may serve as linear habitats and dispersal corridors for weak-flying insects (Vermeulen 1994) and overwintering habitat for several specialists (Schaffers et al 2012;Gallé et al 2018a). In native forests, however, road verges may have a negative impact on the biota, fragmenting forest habitats by exerting barrier effects on the forest specialist species (Yamada et al 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Artificial linear landscape elements (LLEs) are landscape structures established for a special function such as transportation on roads and drainage by ditches, but they have a part covered by vegetation, which is not directly used for its original function, and may potentially constitute semi-natural habitats. It is shown that a significant proportion of native biota can survive in LLEs such as ditch banks ) field margins and hedgerows (Ernoult et al 2013;Gallé et al 2018a;Haaland et al 2011;Morandin and Kremen 2013), road and railway verges (Henneberg et al 2017;Jakobsson et al 2018;Noordijk et al 2009). These LLEs are important in conserving various arthropods and other animals as they can decrease isolation effect of fragmented habitats (Dover et al 2000;Hinsley and Bellamy 2000;MacDonald 2003;Hollmen et al 2008) and also, they function as corridors and refuges for species within highly modified landscapes (Zanden et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Road verges are important secondary habitats for grassland arthropods

et al. 2019

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Semi-natural linear landscape elements such as road verges, hedgerows and field margins are important in maintaining the connectivity between habitat fragments of highly modified landscapes. Preservation of habitat specialist fauna requires conservation of the remaining natural habitat patches and connectivity of fragments. Our study focuses on the spider, ant and true bug fauna and functional diversity (FD) of fragmented forest steppe patches, moderately grazed pastures and road verges embedded in a matrix of forest plantations in Hungary, Central Europe. We established total 30 sampling sites, 10 in each, the grassland component of forest-steppes (F), pastures (P) and road verges (R) near pine forests. We collected arthropods with pitfall and sweep-net techniques. We calculated FD and species composition of arthropods using linear mixed models. We observed higher species richness in road verges for spiders and ants. We also found higher FD values for spiders and different trait composition for all taxa in road verges when compared with forest steppes and pastures. Species composition suggests that road verges do not serve as habitat for several forest-steppe and grassland species, in spite of the fact that numerous specialist species were found in the road verges. We show that forest steppes have higher species richness of spiders than pastures, and there are differences in species assemblage composition of the two habitat types for all taxa.Our results indicate that road verges should be considered as an important refuge for grassland specialist arthropods, as road verges provide secondary linear habitats for many arthropod species, and we would suggest the maintenance of these grassy strips in order to preserve arthropod biodiversity.

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Small-scale agricultural landscapes promote spider and ground beetle densities by offering suitable overwintering sites

Cited by 55 publications

References 66 publications

Predicting Landscape Configuration Effects on Agricultural Pest Suppression

Predicting Landscape Configuration Effects on Agricultural Pest Suppression

Turning old foes into new allies – harnessing drainage canals for biodiversity conservation in desiccated novel ecosystems

Road verges are important secondary habitats for grassland arthropods

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