A global synthesis of the effects of diversified farming systems on arthropod diversity within fields and across agricultural landscapes

lob Chang Biol. 2017 Nov;23(11):4946-4957. doi: 10.1111/gcb.13714. Epub 2017 May 10. Lichtenberg EM1,2, Kennedy CM3, Kremen C4, Batáry P5, Berendse F6, Bommarco R7, Bosque-Pérez NA8, Carvalheiro LG9,10, Snyder WE1, Williams NM11, Winfree R12, Klatt BK5,13,14, Åström S15, Benjamin F12, Brittain C11, Chaplin-Kramer R16, Clough Y13, Danforth B17, Diekötter T18, Eigenbrode SD8, Ekroos J13, Elle E19, Freitas BM20, Fukuda Y21, Gaines-Day HR22, Grab H17, Gratton C22, Holzschuh A23, Isaacs R24, Isaia M25, Jha S26, Jonason D27, Jones VP28, Klein AM29, Krauss J23, Letourneau DK30, Macfadyen S31, Mallinger RE22, Martin EA23, Martinez E32, Memmott J33, Morandin L34, Neame L35, Otieno M36, Park MG17,37, Pfiffner L38, Pocock MJO39, Ponce C40, Potts SG41, Poveda K17, Ramos M42, Rosenheim JA11, Rundlöf M14, Sardiñas H4, Saunders ME43, Schon NL44, Sciligo AR4, Sidhu CS45, Steffan-Dewenter I23, Tscharntke T5, Veselý M46, Weisser WW47, Wilson JK24, Crowder DW1. Author information 1 Department of Entomology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA. 2 Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. 3 Global Lands Program, The Nature Conservancy, Fort Collins, CO, USA. 4 Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. 5 Agroecology, University of Goettingen, Göttingen, Germany. 6 Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands. 7 Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. 8 Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Nematology, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA. 9 Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil. 10 Center for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal. 11 Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA. 12 Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. 13 Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. 14 Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. 15 Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway. 16 Natural Capital Project, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. 17 Department of Entomology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. 18 Department of Landscape Ecology, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany. 19 Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 20 Departamento de Zootecnia, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. 21 Centres for the Study of Agriculture Food and Environment, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. 22 Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. 23 Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany. 24 Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. 25 Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Torino, Italy. 26 Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. 27 Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. 28 Department of Entomology, Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center, Washington State University, Wenatchee, WA, USA. 29 Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany. 30 Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. 31 CSIRO, Acton, ACT, Australia. 32 CORPOICA, Centro de Investigación Obonuco, Pasto, Colombia. 33 School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. 34 Pollinator Partnership Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada. 35 Alberta Environment and Parks, Regional Planning Branch, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 36 Department of Agricultural Resource Management, Embu University College, Embu, Kenya. 37 Department of Humanities & Integrated Studies, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA. 38 Department of Crop Science, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Frick, Switzerland. 39 NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, UK. 40 Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid, Spain. 41 Centre for Agri-Environmental Research, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading, UK. 42 Department of Agricultural Technology, University of Puerto Rico at Utuado, Utuado, PR, USA. 43 Institute for Land Water & Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW, Australia. 44 AgResearch, Lincoln Research Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand. 45 University of California Cooperative Extension, San Mateo & San Francisco Counties, Half Moon Bay, CA, USA. 46 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. 47 Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Department for Ecology and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany. Abstract Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of global biodiversity loss, which can reduce the provisioning of ecosystem services in managed ecosystems. Organic farming and plant diversification are farm management schemes that may mitigate potential ecological harm by increasing species richness and boosting related ecosystem services to agroecosystems. What remains unclear is the extent to which farm management schemes affect biodiversity components other than species richness, and whether impacts differ across spatial scales and landscape contexts. Using a global metadataset, we quantified the effects of organic farming and plant diversification on abundance, local diversity (communities within fields), and regional diversity (communities across fields) of arthropod pollinators, predators, herbivores, and detritivores. Both organic farming and higher in-field plant diversity enhanced arthropod abundance, particularly for rare taxa. This resulted in increased richness but decreased evenness. While these responses were stronger at local relative to regional scales, richness and abundance increased at both scales, and richness on farms embedded in complex relative to simple landscapes. Overall, both organic farming and in-field plant diversification exerted the strongest effects on pollinators and predators, suggesting these management schemes can facilitate ecosystem service providers without augmenting herbivore (pest) populations. Our results suggest that organic farming and plant diversification promote diverse arthropod metacommunities that may provide temporal and spatial stability of ecosystem service provisioning. Conserving diverse plant and arthropod communities in farming systems therefore requires sustainable practices that operate both within fields and across landscapes. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. KEYWORDS: agricultural management schemes; arthropod diversity; biodiversity; evenness; functional groups; landscape complexity; meta-analysis; organic farming; plant diversity PMID: 28488295 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13714