Hierarchical top-down control of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes across organisational levels and spatial scales [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Oliver Schweiger

Sujets

• Biologie

Informations

• Publié par: philipps-universitat_marburg
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hierarchical top-down control of biodiversity
in agricultural landscapes across organisational levels
and spatial scales

Dissertation
zur
Erlangung des Doktorgrades
der Naturwissenschaften
(Dr. rer. nat.)








Dem Fachbereich Biologie
der Philipps-Universität Marburg
vorgelegt von

Oliver Schweiger
aus Salzburg, Österreich
Marburg/Lahn, 2005





















Vom Fachbereich Biologie
der Philipps-Universität Marburg
als Dissertation am 14.01.2005 angenommen.

Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Roland Brandl
Zweitgutachter: Dr. Josef Settele
Tag der mündlichen Prüfung am 25.05.2005



Anschrift des Autors zur Zeit der Promotion:
Oliver Schweiger
UFZ – Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig-Halle
Department of Community Ecology
Theodor-Lieser-Str. 4
D-06120, Halle
Germany
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Mail: [e-mail]

Titelfotos: Agrarlandschaften in Mitteldeutschland (Sachsen-Anhalt). Mit freundlicher
Genehmigung von Torsten Schmidt.







“It is the little things that run the world”
Edward O. Wilson





























Contents v


Contents

1. Introduction 1
1.1. Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes 1
1.2. Objectives 2
1.3. Test sites 5
1.4. References 6

2. Authors’ contribution to the research papers and manuscripts 9

3. Genetics: Spatial genetic structure in a metapopulation of the land
snail Cepaea nemoralis (Gastropoda: Helicidae) 11
3.1. Abstract 11
3.2. Introduction 11
3.3. Materials and Methods 13
3.4. Results 18
3.5. Discussion 22
3.6. References 26

4. Populations: Occurrence pattern of Pararge aegeria (Lepidoptera:
Nymphalidae) with respect to local habitat suitability, climate and
landscape structure 31
4.1. Abstract 31
4.2. Introduction 31
4.3. Methods 33
4.4. Results 37
4.5. Discussion 40
4.6. References 44

5. Communities: Effects of land use on similarity of plant and animal
communities 47
5.1. Abstract 47
5.2. Introduction 47
5.3. Methods 49
5.4. Results 52
5.5. Discussion 59
5.6. References 65




vi Contents


6. Communities: Quantifying the impact of environmental factors on
arthropod communities in agricultural landscapes across
organisational levels and spatial scales 73
6.1. Summary 73
6.2. Introduction 73
6.3. Methods 75
6.4. Results 79
6.5. Discussion 84
6.6. References 89

7. Synthesis 95
7.1. Which factors determine local biodiversity in agricultural landscapes? 95
7.2. References 98

8. Summary – Zusammenfassung 100

9. Acknowledgements 103

10. Appendix 104
10.1. Declaration of self-contained work 104
10.2. Curriculum vitae 105 1. Introduction 1
1. Introduction

1.1. Biodiversity in agricultural landscapes
Biodiversity is one of the fundamental manifestations of life (Wilson & Peter 1988).
Nevertheless, is has been increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activities (Wilson &
Peter 1988). Land-use change is predicted to have the largest global impact on biodiversity
by the year 2100 (Sala et al. 2000; Buckley & Roughgarden 2004). In European countries,
land use is dominated by agriculture which shapes more than half of the land area
th(EUROSTAT 1998). In the 20 century, industrialisation supported major changes in
agricultural land use, which led to significant declines in biodiversity (Krebs et al. 1999;
Robinson & Sutherland 2002). These changes were driven by both the intensification of
agricultural land management and a loss of area, connectivity and diversity of semi-natural
habitats.
Agricultural land-use practices could be regarded as environmental stress factors due
to frequent perturbations by fertiliser and pesticide applications as well as mechanical
treatments. Mechanical crop management activities were shown to adversely affect
arthropod diversity both directly by increasing mortality as well as indirectly by enhancing
emigration due to habitat disruption (Thorbek & Bilde 2004). Increasing fertiliser input has
both direct and indirect negative effects on biodiversity (Haddad, Haarstad, & Tilman
2000; Vickery et al. 2001). Pesticides actually target certain species and species groups but
also affect non-target species (Helioevaara & Vaeisaenen 1993; Holland, Winder, & Perry
2000). Hence, intensively managed agricultural fields represent highly dynamic areas with
a high level of environmental stress and discontinuity in resource supply.
In contrast, semi-natural habitats offer more stable conditions and promote
biodiversity. They provide a variety of extra habitat, food, shelter, breeding sites or
dispersal corridors, and are fundamental even for those species that are tolerant to intensive
agrarian land use. However, the intensification of agricultural management led to changes
in the landscape structure. A decrease in the area of semi-natural habitats is accompanied
by a decrease in species richness according to the well known species-area relationship
(see Rosenzweig 1995). This is most likely because of reducing habitat and resource
diversity (Johnson & Simberloff 1974; Ricklefs & Lovette 1999; Morand 2000) while
increasing potentially negative edge effects (Fahrig 2002). Reducing habitat area also
reduces the effective population size and consequently decreases the probability of
persistence of a particular species (Hedrik & Gilpin 1997; Fahrig 2003).
Additionally, increasing habitat fragmentation affects biodiversity due to a loss of
connectivity. A huge amount of literature exists on this topic, discussing whether habitat
loss or fragmentation per se is the main driver (Fahrig 2003). However, decreasing
connectivity adversely affects dispersal (Debinski & Holt 2000) and therefore the
exchange of individuals and genetic material. This may expose the smaller sub-populations
to a greater risk of local extinction and possibly disrupt genetic and evolutionary processes.
In consequence, this might lead either to isolated populations or to a metapopulation
structure, where regional persistence depends on a compensation of local extinction by
recolonisation according to dispersal ability and the landscape structure (Hanski & Gilpin 2 1. Introduction
1997). Hence, the spatial arrangement of the remaining habitat patches per se might
negatively affect biodiversity (Kareiva & Wennergren 1995).
Biodiversity has also been accepted to have a more complex, spatial component
according to habitat diversity within a landscape, the so called β-diversity (Whittaker
1972; Lande 1996). In contrast to α-diversity (local within-community diversity),
β-diversity denotes the among-community diversity and contributes, together with
α-diversity, to the total biodiversity within a landscape or region (γ-diversity; Veech et al.
2002). Hence, a reduction in habitat diversity has a negative effect on overall biodiversity
by reducing β-diversity.
Since these multiple aspects of agrarian land-use change will affect not only species
richness but all levels of biodiversity such as genes, individuals, populations, communities,
landscapes and ecosystems in specific ways and act across different spatial scales, a
detailed knowledge about the relative effects on particular dimensions of biodiversity is
important for ecological theory and biodiversity research.

1.2. Objectives
The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the relative effects of scale and land-use
changes on major organisational levels of biodiversity in European agricultural landscapes.
Therefore, this thesis deals with three different aspects of biodiversity realised in the same
landscapes: genetics, populations and communities.
The first part deals with the spatial genetic structure of the land snail Cepaea
nemoralis (L.) in a medium fragmented landscape at the local and landscape scale. The
second part focuses on habitat modelling relating occurrence patterns in populations of the
butterfly Pararge aegeria (L.) to environmental variables. At the landscape scale, the
variables included climate and land use and at the local scale they represented local habitat
suitability. The third part analyses two aspects of communities. Firstly, we related the
similarities among local plant and arthropod communities to land-use variables at the
landscape scale while controlling for local effects. We used sim