TY  - JOUR
A1  - Holzschuh, Andrea
A1  - Dainese, Matteo
A1  - Gonzalez-Varo, Juan P.
A1  - Mudri-Stojnic, Sonja
A1  - Riedinger, Verena
A1  - Rundlöf, Maj
A1  - Scheper, Jeroen
A1  - Wickens, Jennifer B.
A1  - Wickens, Victoria J.
A1  - Bommarco, Riccardo
A1  - Kleijn, David
A1  - Potts, Simon G.
A1  - Roberts, Stuart P. M.
A1  - Smith, Henrik G.
A1  - Vilà, Montserrat
A1  - Vujic, Ante
A1  - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf
T1  - Mass-flowering crops dilute pollinator abundance in agricultural landscapes across Europe
JF  - Ecology Letters
N2  - Mass-flowering crops (MFCs) are increasingly cultivated and might influence pollinator communities in MFC fields and nearby semi-natural habitats (SNHs). Across six European regions and 2 years, we assessed how landscape-scale cover of MFCs affected pollinator densities in 408 MFC fields and adjacent SNHs. In MFC fields, densities of bumblebees, solitary bees, managed honeybees and hoverflies were negatively related to the cover of MFCs in the landscape. In SNHs, densities of bumblebees declined with increasing cover of MFCs but densities of honeybees increased. The densities of all pollinators were generally unrelated to the cover of SNHs in the landscape. Although MFC fields apparently attracted pollinators from SNHs, in landscapes with large areas of MFCs they became diluted. The resulting lower densities might negatively affect yields of pollinator- dependent crops and the reproductive success of wild plants. An expansion of MFCs needs to be accompanied by pollinator-supporting practices in agricultural landscapes.
KW  - wild plant pollination
KW  - Colony growth
KW  - Densities
KW  - Context
KW  - crop pollination
KW  - Oilseed rape
KW  - Nesting resources
KW  - Bee abundance
KW  - Yield
KW  - Richness
KW  - Habitats
KW  - Agricultural intensification
KW  - agri-environment schemes
KW  - biofuels
KW  - ecosystem services
KW  - field boundaries
KW  - landscape compositionv
KW  - non-crop habitats
KW  - semi-natural habitats
KW  - spillover
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187356
VL  - 19
IS  - 10
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Maas, Bea
A1  - Brandl, Manuela
A1  - Hussain, Raja Imran
A1  - Frank, Thomas
A1  - Zulka, Klaus Peter
A1  - Rabl, Dominik
A1  - Walcher, Ronnie
A1  - Moser, Dietmar
T1  - Functional traits driving pollinator and predator responses to newly established grassland strips in agricultural landscapes
JF  - Journal of Applied Ecology
N2  - Agricultural biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions are declining at alarming rates due to widespread land use intensification. They can only be maintained through targeted landscape management that supports species with different habitat preferences, dispersal capacities and other functional traits that determine their survival. However, we need better understanding whether short-term measures can already improve functional diversity in European agroecosystems.
We investigated spatio-temporal responses of bees (solitary bees, bumblebees and honey bees), hoverflies, carabid beetles and spiders to newly established grassland strips in Lower Austria over 3 years, and along a distance gradient to old grasslands. Specifically, we asked if new grasslands, compared to old grasslands and cereal fields, serve as temporal dispersal habitat or corridor, and how species-specific traits affect dispersal patterns. Using a trait-based functional diversity approach, we investigated year and distance effects for nine selected key traits per taxon (e.g. body size, feeding guild and habitat preferences).
Our results show that the functional diversity of predators and pollinators (i.e. functional richness and evenness), as well as community-weighted means of selected key traits in new grasslands significantly differed from adjacent cereal fields, but only slowly adjusted to adjacent old grasslands. These effects significantly decreased with increasing distance to old grasslands for carabids and spiders, but not for mobile bees and hoverflies.
Synthesis and applications. Over 3 years, newly established grassland strips supported larger sized and actively foraging/hunting species in the agricultural landscape. Adjacent crops likely benefit from such measures through enhanced functional diversity and related ecosystem services. However, our results also suggest that 3-year period is too short to enhance the occurrence of pollinators and epigeic predators in new grasslands. Agri-environment measures need to be complemented by the conservation of permanent habitats to effectively maintain species and functional diversity. Our findings should be acknowledged by European policy and agricultural decision makers for the design of more effective agri-environment schemes, taking into account trait-dependent species responses to land use change.
KW  - agri-environment schemes
KW  - Common Agricultural Policy
KW  - ecosystem services;
KW  - Europe
KW  - functional diversity analysis;
KW  - pollination
KW  - predation
KW  - trait-based management
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-369992
VL  - 58
ER  -