The interplay of landscape composition and configuration: new pathways to manage functional biodiversity and agroecosystem services across Europe

Abstract

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects of landscape composition (% habitats) and configuration (edge density) on arthropods in fields and their margins, pest control, pollination and yields. Configuration effects interacted with the proportions of crop and non-crop habitats, and species' dietary, dispersal and overwintering traits led to contrasting responses to landscape variables. Overall, however, in landscapes with high edge density, 70% of pollinator and 44% of natural enemy species reached highest abundances and pollination and pest control improved 1.7-and 1.4-fold respectively. Arable-dominated landscapes with high edge densities achieved high yields. This suggests that enhancing edge density in European agroecosystems can promote functional biodiversity and yield-enhancing ecosystem services.

Seasonal shifts and complementary use of pollen sources by two bees, a lacewing and a ladybeetle species in European agricultural landscapes

“…Nevertheless, the diet generally shifted from woody to herbaceous pollen collected from mostly weeds and non-agricultural vegetation sources. This strongly supports incentives to maintain or restore heterogeneous agricultural landscapes (Benton et al, 2003;Martin et al, 2019). Heterogeneous landscapes should be charac-…”

Configurational crop heterogeneity increases within‐field plant diversity

“…The length of field borders benefits plant diversity as much as semi‐natural cover. Thus, managing configurational crop heterogeneity opens new effective and complementary approaches to farmland biodiversity conservation (Batáry et al, ; Fahrig et al, ; Martin et al, ; Sirami et al, ; Solé‐Senan, Juárez‐Escario, Conesa, & Recasens, ). By increasing plant diversity within‐field, the increase of field border length may also contribute to increase the provisioning and spatial continuity of floral resource for organisms ensuring ecological functions beneficial to agricultural production, such as pollination and pest regulation (Vialatte et al, ).…”

“…The few attempts to tease apart the effects of crop heterogeneity components on species diversity have found positive effects of compositional crop heterogeneity, that is, Shannon crop diversity and/or configurational crop heterogeneity, that is, edge density or mean field size, on predatory arthropods (Bertrand, Burel, & Baudry, ; Bosem Baillod, Tscharntke, Clough, & Batáry, ; Fahrig et al, ; Martin et al, ; Palmu, Ekroos, Hanson, Smith, & Hedlund, ), butterflies (Perović et al, ) and wild bees (Hass et al, ). Studies addressing this issue for the diversity of plants within agricultural fields are rarer (but see Fahrig et al, ).…”

Heterogeneity–diversity relationships in sessile organisms: a unified framework

“…This hypothesis provides a major explanation for coexistence of competing species (Shmida & Wilson 1985;Amarasekare 2003) and is often invoked as a primary explanation for spatial gradients in species richness (Currie 1991;Rahbek & Graves 2001;Stein et al 2015). As human activities often modify spatial aspects of habitat conditions, it also provides a valuable starting point for conservation planning and ecosystem management (Benton et al 2003;Fahrig et al 2011Fahrig et al , 2015Martin et al 2019). Hutchinson (1957) was the first to propose a formal framework linking the number of species that can exist in a finite area to the range of environmental conditions within that area ('niche space' in his terminology).…”