Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization

Gámez‐Virués, Sagrario; Perović, David J.; Goßner, Martin M.; Börschig, Carmen; Blüthgen, Nico; Jong, Heike de; Simons, Nadja K.; Klein, Alexandra‐Maria; Krauß, Jochen; Maier, Gwen; Scherber, Christoph; Steckel, Juliane; Rothenwöhrer, Christoph; Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf; Weiner, Christiane N.; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Werner, Michael; Tscharntke, Teja; Westphal, Catrin

doi:10.1038/ncomms9568

Cited by 438 publications

(359 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…This adds evidence to other large-scale recovery estimations that found similar recovery patterns for the cycling of carbon and nitrogen1819. Our results also suggests that mining and water pollution, caused by agriculture and urban uses, could be not only major drivers of biodiversity, and ecosystem function and service loss2021, but also major drivers preventing their recovery. The fact that hurricanes were responsible for the lowest recovery debts suggests that the negative effects of anthropogenic disturbances could cause more pervasive damage than some natural disturbances.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt

et al. 2017

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Ecosystem recovery from anthropogenic disturbances, either without human intervention or assisted by ecological restoration, is increasingly occurring worldwide. As ecosystems progress through recovery, it is important to estimate any resulting deficit in biodiversity and functions. Here we use data from 3,035 sampling plots worldwide, to quantify the interim reduction of biodiversity and functions occurring during the recovery process (that is, the ‘recovery debt'). Compared with reference levels, recovering ecosystems run annual deficits of 46–51% for organism abundance, 27–33% for species diversity, 32–42% for carbon cycling and 31–41% for nitrogen cycling. Our results are consistent across biomes but not across degrading factors. Our results suggest that recovering and restored ecosystems have less abundance, diversity and cycling of carbon and nitrogen than ‘undisturbed' ecosystems, and that even if complete recovery is reached, an interim recovery debt will accumulate. Under such circumstances, increasing the quantity of less-functional ecosystems through ecological restoration and offsetting are inadequate alternatives to ecosystem protection.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt

et al. 2017

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“…Pedley and Dolman () previously observed similar responses of spider body size to landscape characteristics. In grasslands, smaller arthropod species tend to be less common under increasing in‐field management intensity (Gámez‐Virués et al ., ). In our study, the CWM body size of males in species of web‐building spiders showed only little variation compared to females.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Trade‐offs in arthropod conservation between productive and non‐productive agri‐environmental schemes along a landscape complexity gradient

Mader

Diehl

Fiedler

et al. 2017

Insect Conserv Diversity

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Productive and non‐productive agri‐environmental schemes (AES) were developed to support farmland biodiversity. This study compares arthropod predators between productive (organic farming) and non‐productive (sown flowering fields) AES along a landscape complexity gradient. We compared species richness, community composition and community weighted mean body sizes of 12 306 carabids and 4868 spiders in organically managed cereal fields and flowering fields along a landscape complexity gradient. These data were used to evaluate the conservation success of different AES types for a number of exclusive species, financial incentives and benefits for farmers. Carabids only responded to the AES type and their communities had higher species richness in flowering fields. Spider species richness increased with landscape complexity. Community composition differed between AES types for all predator groups, with the composition of ground‐dwelling spiders being additionally affected by landscape complexity. The mean body size of web‐building spiders decreased with landscape complexity and the mean body size of female spiders was larger in flowering fields. Both AES types can contribute to the conservation of predator communities. Species richness increased with non‐productive AES. Agrobiont species occurred more frequently in productive AES. The overall number of exclusive predator species was lower in flowering fields. We emphasise that there is an additive effect of establishing productive and non‐productive AES within the landscape, and a diverse mosaic of different AES types holds the greatest potential to provide a large regional species pool of arthropod predators, while simultaneously guaranteeing financial benefits for farmers from production and subsidies.

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“…surrounding landscape) and temporal scales (i.e. legacy effects of past land uses), which were not considered in this study [56].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locally rare species influence grassland ecosystem multifunctionality

Soliveres

Manning

Prati

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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118

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One contribution of 17 to a theme issue 'Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in dynamic landscapes'. Species diversity promotes the delivery of multiple ecosystem functions (multifunctionality). However, the relative functional importance of rare and common species in driving the biodiversity-multifunctionality relationship remains unknown. We studied the relationship between the diversity of rare and common species (according to their local abundances and across nine different trophic groups), and multifunctionality indices derived from 14 ecosystem functions on 150 grasslands across a landuse intensity (LUI) gradient. The diversity of above-and below-ground rare species had opposite effects, with rare above-ground species being associated with high levels of multifunctionality, probably because their effects on different functions did not trade off against each other. Conversely, common species were only related to average, not high, levels of multifunctionality, and their functional effects declined with LUI. Apart from the communitylevel effects of diversity, we found significant positive associations between the abundance of individual species and multifunctionality in 6% of the species tested. Speciesspecific functional effects were best predicted by their response to LUI: species that declined in abundance with land use intensification were those associated with higher levels of multifunctionality. Our results highlight the importance of rare species for ecosystem multifunctionality and help guiding future conservation priorities.

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Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization

Cited by 438 publications

References 58 publications

Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt

Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt

Trade‐offs in arthropod conservation between productive and non‐productive agri‐environmental schemes along a landscape complexity gradient

Locally rare species influence grassland ecosystem multifunctionality

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