Strikingly high effect of geographic location on fauna and flora of European agricultural grasslands

Abstract

28Wild bees, spiders, earthworms and plants contribute considerably to biodiversity in grasslands and fulfil vital 29 ecological functions. They also provide valuable services to agriculture, such as pollination, pest control and 30 maintenance of soil quality. We investigated the responses of wild bees, spiders, earthworms and plants to 31 geographic location, agricultural management and surrounding landscape variables using a dataset of 357 32Page 2 of 17 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 3 grassland fields within 88 farms in six European regions. Regions and taxonomic groups were selected to have 1 contrasting properties, in order to capture the multiple facets of European grasslands. Geographic location alone 2 had a dominant effect on the fauna and flora communities. Depending on the taxonomic group, various 3 agricultural management and surrounding landscape variables alone had an additional significant effect on 4 observed species richness, rarefied species richness and/or abundance, but it was always small. Bee species 5 richness and abundance decreased with increasing number of mechanical operations (e.g. cutting). Observed 6 spider species richness and abundance were unrelated to measured aspects of agricultural management or to 7 surrounding landscape variables, whereas rarefied species richness showed significant relations to nitrogen input, 8habitat diversity and amount of grassland habitats in the surroundings. Earthworm abundance increased with 9 increasing nitrogen input but earthworm species richness did not. Observed plant species richness decreased with 10 increasing nitrogen input and increased when there were woody habitats in the surroundings. Rarefied plant 11 species richness decreased with mechanical operations. Investigating multiple regions, taxonomic groups and 12 aspects of fauna and flora communities allowed identifying the main factors structuring communities, which is 13 necessary for designing appropriate conservation measures and ensuring continued supply of services. 14 Zusammenfassung

Spatial and Host-Related Variation in Prevalence and Population Density of Wheat Curl Mite (Aceria tosichella) Cryptic Genotypes in Agricultural Landscapes

“…microclimate, topography, environmental heterogeneity, natural enemies, competitors) that may influence spatial geographic variation of these WCM lineages will be necessary to elucidate the mechanisms underlying their population dynamics. However, geographic location alone can also have a dominant effect on distribution of organisms, as was shown for bees, spiders, earthworms and plants in European agricultural grasslands [44]. The population density of six and abundance of four among eight monophagous lineages were affected by spatial variation (Tables 1and 2), which partially supported our predictions.…”

Review: Associations among goods, impacts and ecosystem services provided by livestock farming

“…Recent reviews (e.g. Fahrig et al ., 2011), multi-site surveys (Lüscher et al ., 2015) and meta-analyses (Scohier and Dumont, 2012; Herrero-Jáuregui and Oesterheld, 2018) have quantified the main effects of grassland management and landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity. They show how farming practices interact with landscape heterogeneity in a multi-scale process to shape grassland biodiversity (Figure 1).…”

Grassland management effects on earthworm communities under ambient and future climatic conditions

“…Among soil organisms, soil macro-detritivores like earthworms are key drivers of ecosystem functions, such as litter decomposition, carbon flux and the maintenance of soil structure (Lavelle, 1997), and are increasingly used as an indicator group in soil quality assessments (Fründ, Graefe, & Tischer, 2011). Earthworms are likely to be strongly impacted by global change because their abundance and biomass are determined by the presence of sufficiently high levels of soil moisture (Hackenberger & Hackenberger, 2014;Perreault & Whalen, 2006;Singh, Schädler, Demetrio, Brown, & Eisenhauer, 2019) and the availability and quality of organic matter as a food resource (Abbott & Parker, 1981;Amosse, Turberg, Kohler-Milleret, Gobat, & Le Bayon, 2015;Lüscher et al, 2015).Various climate change drivers, such as increasing temperature, may elevate metabolic demands and affect the life cycle and nutrition of soil animals as well as water availability in the soil (Thakur et al, 2018). Increases in the frequency of extreme precipitation events and droughts (Bates, Kundzewicz, Wu, & Palutikof, 2008) may additionally cause mortality.…”