Integrated ecological monitoring in Wales: the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme field survey

Wood, Claire M.; Alison, Jamie; Botham, Marc S.; Burden, Annette; Edwards, François; Garbutt, R. Angus; George, Paul B. L.; Henrys, Peter A.; Hobson, R. Peter; Jarvis, Susan G.; Keenan, Patrick; Keith, Aidan M.; Lebron, Inma; Maskell, Lindsay C.; Norton, Lisa; Robinson, David A.; Seaton, Fiona M.; Scarlett, Peter; Siriwardena, G.; Skates, James; Smart, Simon M.; Williams, B.; Emmett, Bridget

doi:10.5194/essd-13-4155-2021

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These data were collected as part of the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme field measurement programme in Wales (Emmett et al., 2017; Wood et al., 2021). In total, 300 individual 1 km squares were randomly selected from within land classification strata in proportion to their extent across Wales in order to be representative of the range of habitat types across Wales or targeted to areas with high potential for agri‐environment scheme uptake (Wood et al., 2021). Sampling occurred over a 5‐month period across each of the summers of 2013 to 2016; each square was only surveyed once over the 4 years with different squares being surveyed each year.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A diversity of diversities: Do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below‐ and above‐ground taxa?

Seaton,

George,

Alison

et al. 2024

Journal of Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To predict how biodiversity will respond to global change, it is crucial to understand the relative roles of abiotic drivers and biotic interactions in driving associations between the biodiversity of disparate taxa. It is particularly challenging to understand diversity–diversity links across domains and habitats, because data are rarely available for multiple above‐ and below‐ground taxa across multiple sites. Here, we analyse data from a unique biodiversity data set gathered across a variety of oceanic temperate terrestrial habitats in Wales, comprising 300 sites with co‐located soil microbial, plant, bird and pollinator surveys along with climate and soil physicochemical information. Soil groups are analysed using metabarcoding of the 16S, ITS1 and 18S DNA regions, allowing in‐depth characterisation of microbial and soil animal biodiversity. We explore biodiversity relationships along three aspects of community composition: First, we assess correlation between the alpha diversity of different groups. Second, we assess whether biotic turnover between sites is correlated across different groups. Finally, we investigate the co‐occurrence of individual taxa across sites. In each analysis, we assess the contribution of linear or nonlinear environmental effects. We find that a positive correlation between alpha diversity of plants, soil bacteria, soil fungi, soil heterotrophic protists, bees and butterflies is in fact driven by complex nonlinear responses to abiotic drivers. In contrast, environmental variation did not account for positive associations between the diversity of plants and both birds and AM fungi, suggesting a role for biotic interactions. Both the diversity and taxon‐level associations between the differing soil groups remained even after accounting for nonlinear environmental gradients. Above‐ground, spatial factors played larger roles in driving biotic communities, while linear environmental gradients were sufficient to explain many group‐ and taxon‐level relationships. Synthesis. Our results show how nonlinear responses to environmental gradients drive many of the relationships between plant biodiversity and the biodiversity of above‐ and below‐ground biological communities. Our work shows how different aspects of biodiversity might respond nonlinearly to changing environments and identifies cases where management‐induced changes in one community could either influence other taxa or lead to loss of apparent biological associations.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A diversity of diversities: Do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below‐ and above‐ground taxa?

Seaton,

George,

Alison

et al. 2024

Journal of Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We used field data from the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation programme (GMEP) (Maskell et al 2020a, b, c, Smart et al 2020, Wood et al 2021). The methodology is based largely on that of the UKCEH Countryside Survey (Norton et al 2012).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within each 1 km square, a series of measurements were recorded, including habitat mapping of all features within a 1 km square. As part of the habitat mapping, areas (> 20 × 20 m) were mapped and classified to habitat type (Supporting information, Maskell et al 2020a, Wood et al 2021). All woody linear features (lines of trees and hedgerows) (less than 5 m wide and 20 m minimum length) and individual trees were also recorded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistent relationships between area, heterogeneity and plant species richness in temperate farmed landscapes

Maskell

Alison

Forbes³

et al. 2023

Oikos

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Relationships between area, heterogeneity and species richness are fundamental concepts in ecology yet questions remain about how area and heterogeneity tradeoff (AHTO) to constrain biodiversity. Although there is growing evidence for unimodal heterogeneity diversity relationships (HDR's) and an AHTO, tests of the concept and consequences for species richness across a landscape-scale gradient of human-modified ecosystems are rare. Using data from a national (Wales) field survey we analysed relationships between environmental heterogeneity and plant species richness (α and γ). We used ordination to produce a composite metric of heterogeneity and compared this to commonly used metrics. We used niche hypervolumes to categorise the breadth of plant species' ecological preferences and analysed relationships between species richness, niche width and heterogeneity. The HDR was unimodal with α diversity at the smallest scale and positive with α and γ diversity (non-linear) at the 1 km scale although in low intensity landscapes the HDR with γ diversity was unimodal. There was a unimodal relationship between habitat diversity and γ diversity. Land use intensity was unimodally related to diversity. There were significant interactions between niche width and heterogeneity. Richness of broad niche species increased with heterogeneity with flattening of the curve at higher levels. Narrow niche species were rare and mostly unresponsive. The expected decline in narrow niche species with increasing heterogeneity was not found although they did decline with land-use intensity. Using a unique dataset, an analysis of a large-scale mosaic of ecosystems found that the shape of the HDR varies with land use intensity, the heterogeneity metric, spatial scale, diversity type and niche width. Although heterogeneity can increase species richness, there may be tradeoffs at higher heterogeneity. A fundamental constraint on realising the benefit of heterogeneity is the low availability of narrower niche species in local species pools in modified landscapes.

show abstract

“…Pollinator surveys were managed by Butterfly Conservation and bird surveys managed by the British Trust for Ornithology, and both datasets are publicly available on the EIDC (Botham et al, 2020; Siriwardena et al, 2020). Further details on survey methods are available within the data documentation upon the EIDC, and also within Wood et al (2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data was collected as part of the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (GMEP) field measurement program in Wales (Emmett et al, 2017;Wood et al, 2021). In total, 300 individual 1 km squares were randomly selected from within land classification strata in proportion to their extent across Wales in order to be representative of the range of habitat types across Wales or targeted to areas with high potential for agri-environment scheme uptake (Wood et al, 2021). Sampling occurred over a five-month period across each of the summers of 2013 to 2016; each square was only surveyed once over the four years with different squares being surveyed each year.…”

Section: Field Measurement Programmementioning

confidence: 99%

A diversity of diversities: do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below- and aboveground taxa?

Seaton

George

Jones

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the diversity and composition of ecological communities is a key component in predicting future biodiversity responses to environmental change and implications for ecosystem health. Linking across the domains of life and trophic levels is also essential for understanding whole-ecosystem dynamics but is often challenging to perform and limited in scope. In particular, it is unclear to what extent cross-domain correlations in biodiversity are determined by common abiotic drivers or species interactions. Here we analyse data from a unique biodiversity dataset gathered across a variety of oceanic temperate terrestrial habitats comprising 300 sites with co-located soil microbial, plant, bird and pollinator surveys along with climate and soil physicochemical information. Soil microbial groups are analysed using metabarcoding of the 16S, ITS and 18S DNA regions, allowing in depth characterisation of microbial community composition and diversity. Using Bayesian hierarchical regression models, we show that a positive correlation between plant diversity and soil bacterial and fungal diversity is actually driven by non-linear responses to changing soil pH, with the exception of AM fungi which show positive associations with plant diversity at low soil pH. However, positive associations between plant diversity and bird, and pollinator diversity persisted after accounting for changes in climate. The composition of soil bacteria, fungi, bees, butterflies and birds are all impacted by the plant community in conjunction with edaphic factors. The heterotrophic protistan community strongly tracks the bacterial community in both diversity and composition. The residual associations between taxa after accounting for environmental variation in a joint species distribution model revealed cross-domain correlations. Overall, our results comprehensively show the differential responses, linkages and divergences of cross-Kingdom diversity and composition in aboveground-belowground ecological communities to environmental and biotic properties.

show abstract

Integrated ecological monitoring in Wales: the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme field survey

Cited by 5 publications

References 33 publications

A diversity of diversities: Do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below‐ and above‐ground taxa?

A diversity of diversities: Do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below‐ and above‐ground taxa?

Inconsistent relationships between area, heterogeneity and plant species richness in temperate farmed landscapes

A diversity of diversities: do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below- and aboveground taxa?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About