Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization

2015

Ga'mez-Virue´s, Sagrario

Perovic, David J

Gossner, Martin M

Borschig, Carmen

Bluthgen, Nico

Jong, Heike de

Simons, Nadja K

Klein, Alexandra-Maria

Krauss, Jochen

Maier, Gwen

Scherber, Christoph

Steckel, Juliane

Rothenwohrer, Christoph

Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf

Weiner, Christiane N

Weisser, Wolfgang

Werner, Michael

Tscharntke, Teja

Westphal, Catrin

Journal Article

en

Publication

Nature Publishing Group

United Kingdom

10.1038/ncomms9568

une:1959.11/61172

Biodiversity loss can affect the viability of ecosystems by decreasing the ability of communities to respond to environmental change and disturbances. Agricultural intensification is a major driver of biodiversity loss and has multiple components operating at different spatial scales: from in-field management intensity to landscape-scale simplification. Here we show that landscape-level effects dominate functional community composition and can even buffer the effects of in-field management intensification on functional homogenization, and that animal communities in real-world managed landscapes show a unified response (across orders and guilds) to both landscape-scale simplification and in-field intensification. Adults and larvae with specialized feeding habits, species with shorter activity periods and relatively small body sizes are selected against in simplified landscapes with intense in-field management. Our results demonstrate that the diversity of land cover types at the landscape scale is critical for maintaining communities, which are functionally diverse, even in landscapes where in-field management intensity is high.

link

Nature Communications, v.6, p. 1-8

2041-1723

1

8

Attribution 4.0 International