title: Biodiversity conservation in agriculture requires a multi-scale approach.
abstract: Biodiversity loss--one of the most prominent forms of modern environmental change--has been heavily driven by terrestrial habitat loss and, in particular, the spread and intensification of agriculture. Expanding agricultural land-use has led to the search for strong conservation strategies, with some suggesting that biodiversity conservation in agriculture is best maximized by reducing local management intensity, such as fertilizer and pesticide application. Others highlight the importance of landscape-level approaches that incorporate natural or semi-natural areas in landscapes surrounding farms. Here, we show that both of these practices are valuable to the conservation of biodiversity, and that either local or landscape factors can be most crucial to conservation planning depending on which types of organisms one wishes to save. We performed a quantitative review of 266 observations taken from 31 studies that compared the impacts of localized (within farm) management strategies and landscape complexity (around farms) on the richness and abundance of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate species in agro-ecosystems. While both factors significantly impacted species richness, the richness of sessile plants increased with less-intensive local management, but did not significantly respond to landscape complexity. By contrast, the richness of mobile vertebrates increased with landscape complexity, but did not significantly increase with less-intensive local management. Invertebrate richness and abundance responded to both factors. Our analyses point to clear differences in how various groups of organisms respond to differing scales of management, and suggest that preservation of multiple taxonomic groups will require multiple scales of conservation.
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA gonthier.david@gmail.com.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Gonthier
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, 156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
authors.forename: Katherine K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Ennis
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, 830 N University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Farinas
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Hsun-Yi
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, 830 N University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Aaron L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Iverson
authors.affiliation: Agroecology, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Göttingen, Grisebachstrasse 6, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Péter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Batáry
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 7044, 75007 Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jörgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rudolphi
authors.affiliation: Agroecology, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Göttingen, Grisebachstrasse 6, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Teja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tscharntke
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Bradley J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Cardinale
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Ivette
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Perfecto
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D007448:Invertebrates / Q000502:physiology; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D014714:Vertebrates / Q000502:physiology
keywords: agri-environmental schemes; agroecology; intensification; landscape complexity; organic farming; sustainable agriculture
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