Ant community composition and functional traits in new grassland strips within agricultural landscapes

Scharnhorst, Victor Sebastian; Fiedler, Konrad; Frank, Thomas; Moser, Dietmar; Rabl, Dominik; Brandl, Manuela; Hussain, Raja Imran; Walcher, Ronnie; Maas, Bea

doi:10.1002/ece3.7662

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Supporting this, we found that year since prairie strip establishment affected all responses that we measured at distances from prairie strips except ant richness (Figure 4). Lack of response of ant species richness is consistent with other grassland restoration projects where it takes several years for ant communities to turnover (Dauber and Wolters, 2005;Menke et al, 2015;Hussain et al, 2021;Scharnhorst et al, 2021). With the exception of active carbon, variables displayed a general progression of the first year having small to no effect of distance from prairie strip, to the second year showing a stronger negative effect of distance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Prairie Strips and Lower Land Use Intensity Increase Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

et al. 2022

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Agricultural landscapes can be managed to protect biodiversity and maintain ecosystem services. One approach to achieve this is to restore native perennial vegetation within croplands. Where rowcrops have displaced prairie, as in the US Midwest, restoration of native perennial vegetation can align with crops in so called “prairie strips.” We tested the effect of prairie strips in addition to other management practices on a variety of taxa and on a suite of ecosystem services. To do so, we worked within a 33-year-old experiment that included treatments that varied methods of agricultural management across a gradient of land use intensity. In the two lowest intensity crop management treatments, we introduced prairie strips that occupied 5% of crop area. We addressed three questions: (1) What are the effects of newly established prairie strips on the spillover of biodiversity and ecosystem services into cropland? (2) How does time since prairie strip establishment affect biodiversity and ecosystem services? (3) What are the tradeoffs and synergies among biodiversity conservation, non-provisioning ecosystem services, and provisioning ecosystem services (crop yield) across a land use intensity gradient (which includes prairie strips)? Within prairie strip treatments, where sampling effort occurred within and at increasing distance from strips, dung beetle abundance, spider abundance and richness, active carbon, decomposition, and pollination decreased with distance from prairie strips, and this effect increased between the first and second year. Across the entire land use intensity gradient, treatments with prairie strips and reduced chemical inputs had higher butterfly abundance, spider abundance, and pollination services. In addition, soil organic carbon, butterfly richness, and spider richness increased with a decrease in land use intensity. Crop yield in one treatment with prairie strips was equal to that of the highest intensity management, even while including the area taken out of production. We found no effects of strips on ant biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions (N2O and CH4). Our results show that, even in early establishment, prairie strips and lower land use intensity can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services without a disproportionate loss of crop yield.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Prairie Strips and Lower Land Use Intensity Increase Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

et al. 2022

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“…A recent study conducted in differently structured urban green spaces further indicated that structural complexity of the local vegetation can act as an environmental filter, driving ant communities in terms of species numbers and functional traits (Nooten et al, 2019 ). Comparatively few studies have been conducted in managed temperate grasslands by directly addressing the environment‐community structure relationship at different spatial scales (Dahms et al, 2010 ; Dauber et al, 2003 ; Dauber & Wolters, 2005 ), and even fewer have included a functional trait‐based approach (Heuss et al, 2019 ; Scharnhorst et al, 2021 ; van Noordwijk et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local and landscape environmental heterogeneity drive ant community structure in temperate seminatural upland grasslands

Pérez-Sánchez

Schibalski

Schröder

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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“…While useful in comparing broad community structures, care should be taken to not confound functional groups with having shared functional traits. More recent approaches often correlate trait morphospace with ecology to examine functional diversity (e.g., Nooten et al, 2019 ; Retana et al, 2015 ; Scharnhorst et al, 2021 ). However, conclusions from linking environmental or biological variation to morphological features of the species living there remain tenuous due to untested assumptions about traits and their function (but see Gibb & Parr, 2013 ; Nooten et al, 2019 ; Retana et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the predictive value of functional traits in diverse ant communities

Drager

Rivera

Gibson

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Ant community composition and functional traits in new grassland strips within agricultural landscapes

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 6 publications

References 60 publications

Prairie Strips and Lower Land Use Intensity Increase Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Prairie Strips and Lower Land Use Intensity Increase Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Local and landscape environmental heterogeneity drive ant community structure in temperate seminatural upland grasslands

Testing the predictive value of functional traits in diverse ant communities

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