Gámez-Virués, Sagrario ; Perović, David J. ; Gossner, Martin M. ; Börschig, Carmen ; Blüthgen, Nico ; Jong, Heike de ; Simons, Nadja K. ; Klein, Alexandra-Maria ; Krauss, Jochen ; Maier, Gwen ; Scherber, Christoph ; Steckel, Juliane ; Rothenwöhrer, Christoph ; Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf ; Weiner, Christiane N. ; Weisser, Wolfgang ; Werner, Michael ; Tscharntke, Teja ; Westphal, Catrin (2015):
Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization.
In: Nature communications, 6, p. 8568. ISSN 2041-1723,
[Article]

Abstract

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.

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