Inconsistent responses of carabid beetles and spiders to land-use intensity and landscape complexity in north-western Europe

TY - JOUR

T1 - Inconsistent responses of carabid beetles and spiders to land-use intensity and landscape complexity in north-western Europe

AU - Mei, Zulin

AU - Scheper, Jeroen

AU - Bommarco, Riccardo

AU - de Groot, Gerard Arjen

AU - Garratt, Michael P.D.

AU - Hedlund, Katarina

AU - Potts, Simon G.

AU - Redlich, Sarah

AU - Smith, Henrik G.

AU - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf

AU - van der Putten, Wim H.

AU - van Gils, Stijn

AU - Kleijn, David

N1 - Data archiving: dryad Funding Information: We thank all farmers that participated in this project, we thank the people that identified specimen of GE and SE. This paper has been written in the framework of the European Union funded FP7 project LIBERATION (grant 311781 ) and H2020 project SHOWCASE (grant 862480 ). We thank the editor and five anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions and comments, which were of great help in improving the paper.

PY - 2023/7

Y1 - 2023/7

N2 - Reconciling biodiversity conservation with agricultural production requires a better understanding of how key ecosystem service providing species respond to agricultural intensification. Carabid beetles and spiders represent two widespread guilds providing biocontrol services. Here we surveyed carabid beetles and spiders in 66 winter wheat fields in four northwestern European countries and analyzed how the activity density and diversity of carabid beetles and spiders were related to crop yield (proxy for land-use intensity), percentage cropland (proxy for landscape complexity) and soil organic carbon content, and whether these patterns differed between dominant and non-dominant species. <17 % of carabid or spider species were classified as dominant, which accounted for >90 % of individuals respectively. We found that carabids and spiders were generally related to different aspects of agricultural intensification. Carabid species richness was positively related with crop yield and evenness was negatively related to crop cover. The activity density of non-dominant carabids was positively related with soil organic carbon content. Meanwhile, spider species richness and non-dominant spider species richness and activity density were all negatively related to percentage cropland. Our results show that practices targeted to enhance one functionally important guild may not promote another key guild, which helps explain why conservation measures to enhance natural enemies generally do not ultimately enhance pest regulation. Dominant and non-dominant species of both guilds showed mostly similar responses suggesting that management practices to enhance service provisioning by a certain guild can also enhance the overall diversity of that particular guild.

AB - Reconciling biodiversity conservation with agricultural production requires a better understanding of how key ecosystem service providing species respond to agricultural intensification. Carabid beetles and spiders represent two widespread guilds providing biocontrol services. Here we surveyed carabid beetles and spiders in 66 winter wheat fields in four northwestern European countries and analyzed how the activity density and diversity of carabid beetles and spiders were related to crop yield (proxy for land-use intensity), percentage cropland (proxy for landscape complexity) and soil organic carbon content, and whether these patterns differed between dominant and non-dominant species. <17 % of carabid or spider species were classified as dominant, which accounted for >90 % of individuals respectively. We found that carabids and spiders were generally related to different aspects of agricultural intensification. Carabid species richness was positively related with crop yield and evenness was negatively related to crop cover. The activity density of non-dominant carabids was positively related with soil organic carbon content. Meanwhile, spider species richness and non-dominant spider species richness and activity density were all negatively related to percentage cropland. Our results show that practices targeted to enhance one functionally important guild may not promote another key guild, which helps explain why conservation measures to enhance natural enemies generally do not ultimately enhance pest regulation. Dominant and non-dominant species of both guilds showed mostly similar responses suggesting that management practices to enhance service provisioning by a certain guild can also enhance the overall diversity of that particular guild.

KW - Dominant species

KW - Ecological intensification

KW - Evenness

KW - Natural enemies

KW - Pest control service

KW - Soil organic carbon

U2 - 10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110128

DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110128

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85159580857

SN - 0006-3207

VL - 283

JO - Biological Conservation

JF - Biological Conservation

M1 - 110128

ER -