Agricultural intensification erodes taxonomic and functional diversity in Mediterranean olive groves by filtering out rare species

Tarifa, Rubén; Martínez‐Núñez, Carlos; Valera, Francisco; González‐Varo, Juan P.; Salido, Teresa; Rey, Pedro J.

doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13970

Cited by 36 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Other authors, however, link the increase of therophytes to tillage, while indicating that geophytes and hemicryptophytes increased in undisturbed soils [66]. Similarly, Tarifa et al [89] found that hemicryptophytes and therophyte life forms were favored by intensive management in olive orchards. These life forms have the ability to germinate from the seed banks or resprout when disturbances cease and suitable climatic conditions exist [90].…”

Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…For each of the taxon studied, a search was carried out in the AFA and its addenda [62,[71][72][73][74], on plant functional traits related to the tolerance of threatened taxa to agricultural changes [89]. The life form was selected as a taxon's response to disturbances [67], whereas the type of pollination and dispersal mode are indicators of the dispersal capacity and recruitment success of the plants [67].…”

Section: Trait Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, agricultural intensification is currently significantly decreasing the richness and functional diversity of different biological groups [30,126,127]. Agricultural intensification may cause dominant taxa to become more dominant and rare taxa to become extinct [128]; thus, having a more negative effect over the rare taxa [89,129]. For example, in England, between 1960 and 1997, the loss of rare taxa and the increase of more adaptable common taxa was detected as a consequence of agricultural intensification [129].…”

Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This situation is aggravated for those taxa that depend on pollinators. As shown in Table 1, more than half of the identified taxa (Astragalus nitidiflorus, Linaria nigricans, Narcissus bujei, and Silene diclinis) have generalist entomophilous pollination, which will face an additional threat from agricultural intensification (for example see, Tarifa et al [89]). This occurs mainly because crop intensification threatens the persistence of wild bee communities and pollination services [99], with important negative implications on the reproductive success of plants.…”

Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Agricultural Use on Endangered Plant Taxa in Spain

et al. 2021

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Agriculture is one of the most widespread human activities and has the greatest impact on terrestrial ecosystems, as it transforms natural ecosystems into artificial landscapes using, in many cases, large amounts of pesticides as well as overexploiting natural resources. Therefore, for effective biodiversity conservation, it is necessary to include agricultural systems in conservation programs. In this work, the 50 plant taxa described for Spain as threatened by agricultural use were selected. These were divided according to the type of threat into those affected by crop extension, intensification, or abandonment. In addition, information was obtained concerning their conservation status, level of protection and functional traits (life form, pollination, and dispersal). Finally, the evolution of land use, in the areas near the populations of the selected species, was identified. The selected taxa belong to 21 families and present different life forms and modes of dispersal or pollination. Forty-six percent are endangered (EN) and most are included in legal protection lists. Nearly three-quarters are threatened by crop expansion and land use dynamics, reflecting an expansion of cultivated areas, which adds further pressure to these species. In addition to agricultural expansion, taxa are also at risk, due to important rates of agricultural land abandonment, and mention agricultural intensification. Nevertheless, conservation measures do exist to promote biodiversity in agricultural landscapes that may help to reverse the negative effect of land use dynamics on selected species, but few are specific to threatened flora. Therefore, if threatened plants are to be conserved in agricultural areas, it is necessary to promote a profound transformation of our socioecological systems. One of these transformative changes could come from the human-nature reconnection.

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Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Trait Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Crop Intensificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Agricultural Use on Endangered Plant Taxa in Spain

et al. 2021

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“…land-use intensity in farmland landscapes). Dormann et al, 2007;Ekroos et al, 2010;Karp et al, 2012;Tarifa et al, 2021). Consequently, this process leads to the selection of taxa ('winner' species) characterized by a specific set of functional attributes (Santana et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partitioning beta diversity to untangle mechanisms underlying the assembly of bird communities in Mediterranean olive groves

García‐Navas

Martínez‐Núñez

Tarifa

et al. 2021

Diversity and Distributions

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Influence of maintenance practices on hydraulic functions of ditches: A trait‐based approach

et al. 2022

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Maintenance practices in agricultural ditches influence their abiotic and biotic functioning in the short and medium terms, leading to modifications of plant communities. These modifications might in turn affect the water transport regulation and seed retention functions of ditches. The effects of maintenance practices on ditch plant communities have been poorly studied in terms of (i) functional response traits to maintenance practices and (ii) functional effect traits driving ecosystem functioning.We designed an experiment to compare the effects of different maintenance practices (mowing, burning, chemical weeding and dredging) in an agricultural Mediterranean ditch. We measured the plant species richness (i.e. alpha diversity or number of species), stem densities and plant traits/community functional parameters affecting water transport and seed retention (height, blockage factor and surface vegetation ratio), every year during 2 years before and after applying contrasting maintenance practices. All the plants growing in the bottom and on the banks of the studied ditch were identified. We characterised the differences between treatments using linear mixed-effects models. Maintenance practices differently affected plant communities and resulting ecosystem functions. After 2 years, burning was the poorest practice regarding seed retention and the best practice regarding hydraulic transport capacity, on the basis of a water depth of 60 cm in the ditch. Mowing was the poorest practice regarding water transport and was an averaged practice for seed retention. Mowing was also the practice favouring the highest richness. Chemical weeding did not really differ from the control in terms of studied traits and parameters, although a slight decrease in water conveyance ability and increase in seed retention were assessed after 2 years. The results pave the way to developing easy to implement maintenance solutions with the potential to optimise ecosystem functions, relying both on historical agricultural practices for farmers (involving no new know-how) and on nonintroduced plant species.

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Agricultural intensification erodes taxonomic and functional diversity in Mediterranean olive groves by filtering out rare species

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri bution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 36 publications

References 61 publications

Effects of Agricultural Use on Endangered Plant Taxa in Spain

Effects of Agricultural Use on Endangered Plant Taxa in Spain

Partitioning beta diversity to untangle mechanisms underlying the assembly of bird communities in Mediterranean olive groves

Influence of maintenance practices on hydraulic functions of ditches: A trait‐based approach

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