Differential effects of soil conservation practices on arthropods and crop yields

Abstract

Agricultural diversification often promotes biodiversity and ecosystem services by increasing habitat diversity. However, responses to agricultural diversification are context dependent, differentially impacting functional groups of service-providing organisms and crop yields. Conservation and no tillage are promoted as agricultural diversification practices that increase soil heterogeneity and habitat diversity. Here we investigated whether soil tillage practices in canola crop fields altered arthropod biodiversity or yield, and how effects of field-scale diversification compared to landscape-scale habitat context. We focused on effects of high, medium, or no tillage on five functional groups with unique diets and reproductive strategies: (i) herbivores, (ii) kleptoparasites, (iii) parasitoids, (iv) pollinators, and (v) predators. Effects of agricultural diversification on arthropod abundance and diversity varied across functional groups. Pollinators responded to on-farm soil diversification, benefiting from medium tillage. Predators and herbivores responded most strongly to landscape-scale habitat composition and were more abundant in landscapes with more semi-natural habitat. However, variation in arthropod communities had little effect on canola crop yield, which was lowest in fields with no tillage. Policy implications: Our results indicate that natural history differences among arthropod functional groups mediate how habitat availability affects biodiversity. Crop yields, however, showed no response to biodiversity of ecosystem service providers. Our research highlights the need to determine the contexts in which soil diversification practices meet a multi-faceted goal of simultaneously supporting natural biodiversity, ecosystem services, and crop yield.

A globally synthesised and flagged bee occurrence dataset and cleaning workflow

“…Smaller collections are indicated under ‘Other’ on the outer ring and the associated inner ring indicates individual datasets. The ‘Other’ collections are the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), Allan Smith-Pardo (ASP), Bob Minckley (BMin), Bombus Montana (BMont), The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES 30,31 ), Ecdysis (Ecd 28 ), Gaiarsia (Gai 29 ), Elinor Lichtenberg (Lic 37 ), Victorian and Western Australian Museum (VicWam 5,39 ), and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) data. The size of each ring and inner linkage (chord) is relative to the number of occurrences.…”

“…Unique occurrences are those that were not matched to any other occurrences and were also kept. The included datasets are the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), Victorian and Western Australian Museum (VicWam 5,39 ), Elle Pollination Ecology Lab (EPEL 26 ), the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES 30,31 ), Ecdysis (Ecd 28 ), Allan Smith-Pardo (ASP), Gaiarsia (Gai 29 ), Bombus Montana (BMont 27 ), Ballare, et al 36 (Bal), Armando (Arm), Bob Minckley (BMin), Elinor Lichtenberg (Lic 37 ), Eastern Colarado (EaCO), Texas literature data (SMC), and Dorey literature data (Dor 3,4,38 ).…”

“…In this instance, (i) taxonomic qualifier, (ii) gridded longitudes, (iii) gridded latitudes, and (iv) gridded latitude and longitude were not included in the summary row. The included datasets are the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), Allan Smith-Pardo (ASP), the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES 30,31 ), Bombus Montana (BMont 27 ), Bob Minckley (BMin), Ecdysis (Ecd 28 ), Gaiarsia (Gai 29 ), Elle Pollination Ecology Lab (EPEL 26 ), Victorian and Western Australian Museum (VicWam 5,39 ), Armando (Arm), Ballare, et al 36 (Bal), Eastern Colarado (EaCO), Elinor Lichtenberg (Lic 37 ), Texas literature data (SMC), and Dorey literature data (Dor 3,4,38 ).…”

“…The primary repositories that we sourced data from were (i) GBIF, (ii) SCAN, (iii) Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), (iv) the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and (v) the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Additionally, we have sought out and incorporated smaller public or private data sources from (i) Allan Smith-Pardo (ASP), (ii) Robert Minckley (BMin), (iii) Elle Pollination Ecology Lab (EPEL 26 ), (iv) Bombus Montana (Bmont; Casey Delphia 27 ), (v) Ecdysis (Ecd 28 ), (vi) Gaiarsa, et al 29 (Gai), (vii) the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES 30,31 ), (viii), USDA ARS South-eastern USA (Parys), (ix) Eastern Colorado (Arathi Seshadri), (xi) Florida State Collection of Arthropods (FSCA), (xi) Armando Falcon-Brindis (Arm), and (xii) four more publicly available bee datasets from the literature (SMC, Bal, Lic, Dor, VicWam) [3][4][5][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] . These datasets were collated by directly engaging and collaborating with their owners, particularly where data gaps were perceived, but with a particular emphasis on the Americas.…”

“…Asterisks next to function names indicate that they are parallel-ready (can be run across multiple threads). 29,30 ), Ecdysis (Ecd 27 ), Gaiarsia (Gai 28 ), Elinor Lichtenberg (Lic) 36 , and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) data. The size of each ring and inner linkage (chord) is relative to the number of occurrences.…”