Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe |
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Authors: | Maria A Tsiafouli Elisa Thébault Stefanos P Sgardelis Peter C de Ruiter Wim H van der Putten Klaus Birkhofer Lia Hemerik Franciska T de Vries Richard D Bardgett Mark Vincent Brady Lisa Bjornlund Helene Bracht Jørgensen Sören Christensen Tina D’ Hertefeldt Stefan Hotes WH Gera Hol Jan Frouz Mira Liiri Simon R Mortimer Heikki Setälä Joseph Tzanopoulos Karoline Uteseny Václav Pi?l Josef Stary Volkmar Wolters Katarina Hedlund |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Ecology, School of Biology, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece;2. Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences of Paris, iEES‐Paris UMR 7618 (CNRS UMPC IRD INRA UPEC), University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France;3. Biometris, Mathematical and Statistical Methods, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands;4. Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO‐KNAW), Wageningen, The Netherlands;5. Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands;6. Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden;7. Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK;8. Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Lund, Sweden;9. Department of Biology, Terrestrial Ecology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark;10. Department of Ecology, Philipps‐University, Marburg, Germany;11. Department of Animal Ecology, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany;12. Institute of Soil Biology, Biology Centre Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic;13. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Lahti, Finland;14. Centre for Agri‐Environmental Research, School of Agriculture, Policy & Development, University of Reading, Reading, UK;15. School of Anthropology and Conservation, The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK;16. Department of Conservation Biology, Vegetation and Landscape Ecology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria |
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Abstract: | Soil biodiversity plays a key role in regulating the processes that underpin the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is known to change the diversity of individual groups of soil biota, but less is known about how intensification affects biodiversity of the soil food web as a whole, and whether or not these effects may be generalized across regions. We examined biodiversity in soil food webs from grasslands, extensive, and intensive rotations in four agricultural regions across Europe: in Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece. Effects of land‐use intensity were quantified based on structure and diversity among functional groups in the soil food web, as well as on community‐weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. We also elucidate land‐use intensity effects on diversity of taxonomic units within taxonomic groups of soil fauna. We found that between regions soil food web diversity measures were variable, but that increasing land‐use intensity caused highly consistent responses. In particular, land‐use intensification reduced the complexity in the soil food webs, as well as the community‐weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. In all regions across Europe, species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, and oribatid mites was negatively affected by increased land‐use intensity. The taxonomic distinctness, which is a measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community that is independent of species richness, was also reduced by land‐use intensification. We conclude that intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity, making soil food webs less diverse and composed of smaller bodied organisms. Land‐use intensification results in fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species. We discuss how these changes in soil biodiversity due to land‐use intensification may threaten the functioning of soil in agricultural production systems. |
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Keywords: | agricultural intensification body mass ecosystem services functional groups soil food web taxonomic breadth taxonomic distinctness terrestrial ecosystems |
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