1. Grassland management intensification weakens the associations among the diversities of multiple plant and animal taxa
- Author
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Manfred Türke, Konstans Wells, Swen C. Renner, Christiane N. Weiner, Till Kleinebecker, François Buscot, Daniel Prati, Norbert Hölzel, Stefan Böhm, Michael Werner, Eric Allan, Andreas Hemp, Sonja Gockel, Martin M. Gossner, Markus Fischer, Karl Eduard Linsenmair, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Peter Manning, Oliver Bossdorf, Jochen Krauss, Carmen Börschig, Marco Tschapka, Stephanie A. Socher, Nico Blüthgen, Markus Lange, Jörg Müller, Esther Pašalić, Kirsten Jung, Elisabeth K. V. Kalko, Steffen Boch, Valentin H. Klaus, Yuan-Ye Zhang, and Alexandra-Maria Klein
- Subjects
Land-use intensity ,0106 biological sciences ,Mowing ,Land-use change ,Biodiversity ,580 Plants (Botany) ,Biology ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Multidiversity ,Grassland ,Multitrophic interactions ,Grazing ,Grassland management ,Taxonomic rank ,Institut für Biochemie und Biologie ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Invertebrate ,Trophic level ,2. Zero hunger ,geography ,geography.geographical_feature_category ,Biodiversity indicators ,Ecology ,010604 marine biology & hydrobiology ,15. Life on land ,Correlation ,Taxon ,Ecosystems Research ,Fertilization ,Species richness - Abstract
Land-use intensification is a key driver of biodiversity change. However, little is known about how it alters relationships between the diversities of different taxonomic groups, which are often correlated due to shared environmental drivers and trophic interactions. Using data from 150 grassland sites, we examined how land-use intensification (increased fertilization, higher livestock densities, and increased mowing frequency) altered correlations between the species richness of 15 plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate taxa. We found that 54% of pairwise correlations between taxonomic groups were significant and positive among all grasslands, while only one was negative. Higher land-use intensity substantially weakened these correlations (35% decrease in r and 43% fewer significant pairwise correlations at high intensity), a pattern which may emerge as a result of biodiversity declines and the breakdown of specialized relationships in these conditions. Nevertheless, some groups (Coleoptera, Heteroptera, Hymenoptera and Orthoptera) were consistently correlated with multidiversity, an aggregate measure of total biodiversity comprised of the standardized diversities of multiple taxa, at both high and low land-use intensity. The form of intensification was also important; increased fertilization and mowing frequency typically weakened plant–plant and plant–primary consumer correlations, whereas grazing intensification did not. This may reflect decreased habitat heterogeneity under mowing and fertilization and increased habitat heterogeneity under grazing. While these results urge caution in using certain taxonomic groups to monitor impacts of agricultural management on biodiversity, they also suggest that the diversities of some groups are reasonably robust indicators of total biodiversity across a range of conditions. Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/10.1890/14-1307.1
- Published
- 2015
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