Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 8568
• Main Authors: Gámez-Virués, Sagrario, Perović, David J., Gossner, Martin M., Börschig, Carmen, Blüthgen, Nico, de Jong, Heike, 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
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.10.2015; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Pub. Group
• Subjects: 631/158/2178; 631/158/670; 631/158/853; Agriculture; Animals; Arachnida; Bees; Biodiversity; Biodiversity loss; Biota; Coleoptera; Community composition; Diptera; Ecosystem; Environmental changes; Germany; Grassland; Hemiptera; Heteroptera; Homogenization; Humanities and Social Sciences; Intensive farming; Larva; Larvae; Lepidoptera; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9568

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. Agricultural intensification may negatively impact biodiversity via a number of mechanisms. Here, Gámez-Virués et al. show that landscape simplification acts as an environmental filter to homogenise grassland arthropod communities into pools of species with less specialised functional traits.