Biodiversity and pollination benefits trade off against profit in an intensive farming system.

Agricultural expansion and intensification have boosted global food production but have come at the cost of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Biodiversity-friendly farming that boosts ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control, is widely being advocated to maintain and improve agricultural productivity while safeguarding biodiversity. A vast body of evidence showing the agronomic benefits of enhanced ecosystem service delivery represent important incentives to adopt practices enhancing biodiversity. However, the costs of biodiversity-friendly management are rarely taken into account and may represent a major barrier impeding uptake by farmers. Whether and how biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service delivery, and farm profit can go hand in hand is unknown. Here, we quantify the ecological, agronomic, and net economic benefits of biodiversity-friendly farming in an intensive grassland-sunflower system in Southwest France. We found that reducing land-use intensity on agricultural grasslands drastically enhances flower availability and wild bee diversity, including rare species. Biodiversity-friendly management on grasslands furthermore resulted in an up to 17% higher revenue on neighboring sunflower fields through positive effects on pollination service delivery. However, the opportunity costs of reduced grassland forage yields consistently exceeded the economic benefits of enhanced sunflower pollination. Our results highlight that profitability is often a key constraint hampering adoption of biodiversity-based farming and uptake critically depends on society's willingness to pay for associated delivery of public goods such as biodiversity.

Land use modulates resistance of grasslands against future climate and inter-annual climate variability in a large field experiment.

Climate and land-use change are key drivers of global change. Full-factorial field experiments in which both drivers are manipulated are essential to understand and predict their potentially interactive effects on the structure and functioning of grassland ecosystems. Here, we present 8 years of data on grassland dynamics from the Global Change Experimental Facility in Central Germany. On large experimental plots, temperature and seasonal patterns of precipitation are manipulated by superimposing regional climate model projections onto background climate variability. Climate manipulation is factorially crossed with agricultural land-use scenarios, including intensively used meadows and extensively used (i.e., low-intensity) meadows and pastures. Inter-annual variation of background climate during our study years was high, including three of the driest years on record for our region. The effects of this temporal variability far exceeded the effects of the experimentally imposed climate change on plant species diversity and productivity, especially in the intensively used grasslands sown with only a few grass cultivars. These changes in productivity and diversity in response to alterations in climate were due to immigrant species replacing the target forage cultivars. This shift from forage cultivars to immigrant species may impose additional economic costs in terms of a decreasing forage value and the need for more frequent management measures. In contrast, the extensively used grasslands showed weaker responses to both experimentally manipulated future climate and inter-annual climate variability, suggesting that these diverse grasslands are more resistant to climate change than intensively used, species-poor grasslands. We therefore conclude that a lower management intensity of agricultural grasslands, associated with a higher plant diversity, can stabilize primary productivity under climate change.

Functional diversity of ground beetles improved aphid control but did not increase crop yields on European farms.

Land-use intensification is often associated with a decline in functional diversity, potentially undermining the provision of ecosystem services. However, how changes in traits affect ecosystem processes remains poorly understood. Variation in trait values among species in a community may drive ecosystem processes. Alternatively, the mass ratio hypothesis proposes that trait values of the dominant species in a local community are related to ecosystem processes. Using data from 159 farms in six European countries, we quantified the impact of local and landscape-level land-use intensity on ground beetles as pest control agents. We then assessed the extent to which functional diversity and community-weighted mean trait values relate to pest control and cereal yield. In addition, we assessed how the responses to land use and the effects of different species on pest control and yield varied with their traits to compare the relative impact of the traits studied. Functional diversity of ground beetles improved aphid removal, but did not translate into higher crop yields. Pest control of aphids was enhanced by a higher proportion of smaller, mobile ground beetles with a preference for the vegetation layer. Smaller, predatory ground beetles in communities improved crop yield. The magnitude of responses to land-use intensification and the effects on pest control and yield were more strongly influenced by body size than other traits. Our study provides evidence that reduced management intensity can improve pest control by supporting small-sized, macropterous ground beetles. In contrast to the claims of ecological intensification, our joint analysis of the direct effects of land use on yield and indirect effects via functional diversity of ground beetles and pest control suggests that ecosystem services by ground beetles cannot compensate for the yield gap due to a reduction in land-use intensity.

Past and recent farming degrades aquatic insect genetic diversity.

Recent declines in once-common species are triggering concern that an environmental crisis point has been reached. Yet, the lack of long abundance time series data for most species can make it difficult to attribute these changes to anthropogenic causes, and to separate them from normal cycles. Genetic diversity, on the other hand, is sensitive to past and recent environmental changes, and reflects a measure of a populations' potential to adapt to future stressors. Here, we consider whether patterns of genetic diversity among aquatic insects can be linked to historical and recent patterns of land use change. We collated mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) variation for >700 aquatic insect species across the United States, where patterns of agricultural expansion and intensification have been documented since the 1800s. We found that genetic diversity was lowest in regions where cropland was historically (pre-1950) most extensive, suggesting a legacy of past environmental harm. Genetic diversity further declined where cropland has since expanded, even after accounting for climate and sampling effects. Notably though, genetic diversity also appeared to rebound where cropland has diminished. Our study suggests that genetic diversity at the community level can be a powerful tool to infer potential population declines and rebounds over longer time spans than is typically possible with ecological data. For the aquatic insects that we considered, patterns of land use many decades ago appear to have left long-lasting damage to genetic diversity that could threaten evolutionary responses to rapid global change.

Species-level correlates of land-use responses and climate-change sensitivity in terrestrial vertebrates.

Land-use and climate change are major pressures on terrestrial biodiversity. Species' extinction risk and responses to human pressures relate to ecological traits and other characteristics in some clades. However, large-scale comparative assessments of the associations between traits and responses to multiple human pressures across multiple clades are needed. We investigated whether a set of ecological characteristics that are commonly measured across terrestrial vertebrates (ecological traits and geographic range area) are associated with species' responses to different land-use types and species' likely sensitivity to climate change. We aimed to test whether generalizable patterns in response to these pressures arise across both pressures and across vertebrate clades, which could inform assessments of the global signature of human pressures on vertebrate biodiversity and guide conservation efforts. At the species level, we investigated associations between land-use responses and ecological characteristics with a space-for-time substitution approach, making use of the PREDICTS database. We investigated associations between ecological characteristics and expected climate-change sensitivity, estimated from properties of species realized climatic niches. Among the characteristics we considered, 3 were consistently associated with strong land-use responses and high climate-change sensitivity across terrestrial vertebrate classes: narrow geographic range, narrow habitat breadth, and specialization on natural habitats (which described whether a species occurs in artificial habitats or not). The associations of other traits with species' land-use responses and climate-change sensitivity often depended on species' class and land-use type, highlighting an important degree of context dependency. In all classes, invertebrate eaters and fruit and nectar eaters tended to be negatively affected in disturbed land-use types, whereas invertebrate-eating and plant- and seed-eating birds were estimated to be more sensitive to climate change, raising concerns about the continuation of ecological processes sustained by these species under global changes. Our results highlight a consistently higher sensitivity of narrowly distributed species and habitat specialists to land-use and climate change, which provides support for capturing such characteristics in large-scale vulnerability assessments.

Correlaciones a nivel de especie de las respuestas al uso de suelo y la susceptibilidad al cambio climático en los vertebrados terrestres Resumen El uso de suelo y el cambio climático tienen una presión importante sobre la biodiversidad terrestre. En algunos clados, el riesgo de extinción de las especies y las respuestas a las presiones humanas se relacionan con los rasgos ecológicos y otras características. Sin embargo, varios clados necesitan evaluaciones comparativas a gran escala de las asociaciones entre los rasgos y las respuestas a las presiones humanas. Investigamos si un conjunto de rasgos ecológicos medidos comúnmente en los vertebrados terrestres (rasgos ecológicos y extensión del área geográfica) está asociado con la respuesta de las especies a los diferentes tipos de uso de suelo y la posible susceptibilidad de la especie al cambio climático. Buscamos comprobar si los patrones generalizables de las respuestas a estas presiones surgen en ambas presiones y en todos los clados de vertebrados, lo que podría guiar las evaluaciones de la huella mundial de presiones humanas sobre la diversidad de vertebrados y los esfuerzos de conservación. Investigamos las asociaciones entre la respuesta al uso de suelo y los rasgos ecológicos a nivel de especie con una estrategia de reemplazo de espacio por tiempo y con información de la base de datos PREDICTS. También investigamos las asociaciones entre los rasgos ecológicos y la susceptibilidad al cambio climático esperada, la cual estimamos a partir de las propiedades de los nichos climáticos de las especies. Entre las características que consideramos, tres estuvieron asociadas de manera regular con respuestas fuertes al uso de suelo y alta susceptibilidad al cambio climático en las diferentes clases de vertebrados: la extensión geográfica limitada, la amplitud reducida de hábitat y la especialización en los hábitats naturales (la cual describe si una especie está presente en un hábitat artificial o no). Las asociaciones de otros rasgos con la respuesta de la especie al uso de suelo y su susceptibilidad al cambio climático con frecuencia dependieron de la clase de la especie y el tipo de uso de suelo, lo que resalta un grado importante de dependencia del contexto. En todas las clases, los frugívoros, nectarívoros y los que comen invertebrados eran propensos a sufrir efectos negativos en los usos de suelo de tipo perturbado, mientras que se estimó que las aves herbívoras, las que se alimentan de semillas y las que se alimentan de invertebrados eran más susceptibles al cambio climático, lo que incrementa la preocupación por la continuación de los procesos ecológicos que viven estas especies bajo los cambios globales. Nuestros resultados resaltan una susceptibilidad al uso de suelo y al cambio climático cada vez mayor en las especies con distribución limitada y las especialistas de hábitat, lo que proporciona un respaldo para la captura de dichas características en las evaluaciones a gran escala de la vulnerabilidad.

Quantifying the direct effects of long-term dynamic land use intensity on vegetation change and its interacted effects with economic development and climate change in jiangsu, China.

Vegetation change reflects sensitive responses of ecosystem environment to global climate change as well as land use. It is well known that land use type and its transformation affect vegetation change. However, how the changes in land use intensity (LUI) within different land use types impact vegetation and the interactions with other drivers remain poorly understood. We measured the LUI of Jiangsu Province, China, within the main land use types in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2018 by combining remote sensing-based land use data with representative county scale economic and social indicators. Structural equation models (SEMs) were built to quantify the influences of long term LUI on vegetation change interacting with economic development, climate change and topographical conditions in transformed land, cropland, rural settlements and urbanized land, respectively. Seventy percent of significant vegetation change existed in non-transformed land use types. Although the area with a vegetation greening trend is larger than that with a vegetation browning trend, the vegetation browning areas is prominent in urbanized lands and some croplands in south basins. The constructed SEMs suggested the dominant negative effect of fast economic development regardless of land use types, while LUI played important and different direct and indirect effects on affecting vegetation change significantly interacting with economic development and climate change in different land use types. The LUI increasing led a vegetation greening in cropland, and stronger than climate warming with both positive direct and indirect effects for influencing climate change. The LUI change took negative effects on vegetation change in rural and urban areas, while a positive indirect effect of LUI increasing in urbanized land signaled the positive results of human managements. We then provided some land use-specific suggestions on basin scale for land management in Jiangsu. Our results highlight the necessity of long-term LUI quantification and promote the understanding of its effects on vegetation change interacted with other drivers within different land use types. This can be very helpful for sustainable land use and managements in regions with fast economic development.

Land use intensification increasingly drives the spatiotemporal patterns of the global human appropriation of net primary production in the last century.

Land use has greatly transformed Earth's surface. While spatial reconstructions of how the extent of land cover and land-use types have changed during the last century are available, much less information exists about changes in land-use intensity. In particular, global reconstructions that consistently cover land-use intensity across land-use types and ecosystems are missing. We, therefore, lack understanding of how changes in land-use intensity interfere with the natural processes in land systems. To address this research gap, we map land-cover and land-use intensity changes between 1910 and 2010 for 9 points in time. We rely on the indicator framework of human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) to quantify and map land-use-induced alterations of the carbon flows in ecosystems. We find that, while at the global aggregate level HANPP growth slowed down during the century, the spatial dynamics of changes in HANPP were increasing, with the highest change rates observed in the most recent past. Across all biomes, the importance of changes in land-use areas has declined, with the exception of the tropical biomes. In contrast, increases in land-use intensity became the most important driver of HANPP across all biomes and settings. We conducted uncertainty analyses by modulating input data and assumptions, which indicate that the spatial patterns of land use and potential net primary production are the most critical factors, while spatial allocation rules and uncertainties in overall harvest values play a smaller role. Highlighting the increasing role of land-use intensity compared to changes in the areal extent of land uses, our study supports calls for better integration of the intensity dimension into global analyses and models. On top of that, we provide important empirical input for further analyses of the sustainability of the global land system.

The global impact of management on soil nematode abundances.

Research Highlight: Li, X., Liu, T., Li, H., Geisen, S., Hu, F., & Liu, M. (2022). Management effects on soil nematode abundance differ among functional groups and land-use types at a global scale. Journal of Animal Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13744. Despite the well-documented decline of aboveground species abundances as a result of land-use intensification, there has been little attention on the effects of human activities on belowground species abundances. Li et al. analyse nematode data, the most abundant animal on the planet, from across the globe to determine whether their abundances vary between managed and unmanaged habitats. The authors show that, unlike aboveground biodiversity, nematode abundance is higher in managed than unmanaged primary and secondary habitats. Furthermore, responses to land management vary between trophic groups and they do not appear to follow the general hypothesis that higher trophic levels are more vulnerable to human activity than those further down the food chain, except in urban habitats. Finally, Li et al. show that the relationships between environmental predictors and species abundance were weakened (and sometimes reversed) in managed habitats. Together, their results reveal how land-use management is impacting the trophic composition of soil nematode communities and their relationships with the environment, which has implications for ecosystem functioning.

Management effects on soil nematode abundance differ among functional groups and land-use types at a global scale.

Anthropogenic land use is threatening global biodiversity. As one of the most abundant animals on Earth, nematodes occupy several key positions in belowground food webs and contribute to many ecosystem functions and services. However, the effects of land use on nematode abundance and its determinants remain poorly understood at a global scale. To characterize nematodes' responses to land use across trophic groups, we used a dataset of 6,825 soil samples globally to assess how nematode abundance varies among regional land-use types (i.e. primary vegetation, secondary vegetation, pasture, cropland and urban) and local land-use intensities (i.e. human-managed or not). We also quantified the interactive effects of land use and environmental predictors (i.e. mean annual temperature, annual precipitation, soil organic carbon, soil pH, global vegetation biomass and global vegetation productivity) on nematode abundance. We found that total nematode abundance and the abundance of bacterivores, fungivores, herbivores, omnivores and predators generally increased or were not affected under management across land-use types. Specifically, the most numerically abundant bacterivores were higher in managed than in unmanaged secondary vegetation habitats and urban areas, and herbivores were more abundant in managed than in unmanaged primary and secondary vegetation habitats. Furthermore, the numbers of significant environmental predictors of nematode abundance were reduced and the magnitude and the direction of the predictors were changed under management. We also found that nematode abundance was more variable and less determined by environmental factors in urban than in other land-use types. These findings challenge the view that human land use decreases animal abundance across trophic groups, but highlight that land use is altering the trophic composition of soil nematodes and its relationships with the environment at the global scale.

Unravelling insect declines: can space replace time?

Temporal trends in insect numbers vary across studies and habitats, but drivers are poorly understood. Suitable long-term data are scant and biased, and interpretations of trends remain controversial. By contrast, there is substantial quantitative evidence for drivers of spatial variation. From observational and experimental studies, we have gained a profound understanding of where insect abundance and diversity is higher-and identified underlying environmental conditions, resource change and disturbances. We thus propose an increased consideration of spatial evidence in studying the causes of insect decline. This is because for most time series available today, the number of sites and thus statistical power strongly exceed the number of years studied. Comparisons across sites allow quantifying insect population risks, impacts of land use, habitat destruction, restoration or management, and stressors such as chemical and light pollution, pesticides, mowing or harvesting, climatic extremes or biological invasions. Notably, drivers may not have to change in intensity to have long-term effects on populations, e.g. annually repeated disturbances or mortality risks such as those arising from agricultural practices. Space-for-time substitution has been controversially debated. However, evidence from well-replicated spatial data can inform on urgent actions required to halt or reverse declines-to be implemented in space.

Global Human Consumption Threatens Key Biodiversity Areas.

Key biodiversity areas (KBAs) are critical regions for preserving global biodiversity. KBAs are identified by their importance to biodiversity rather than their legal status. As such, KBAs are often under pressure from human activities. KBAs can encompass many different land-use types (e.g., cropland, pastures) and land-use intensities. Here, we combine a global economic model with spatial mapping to estimate the biodiversity impacts of human land use in KBAs. We find that global human land use within KBAs causes disproportionate biodiversity losses. While land use within KBAs accounts for only 7% of total land use, it causes 16% of the potential global plant loss and 12% of the potential global vertebrate loss. The consumption of animal products accounts for more than half of biodiversity loss within KBAs, with housing the second largest at around 10%. Bovine meat is the largest single contributor to this loss, at around 31% of total biodiversity loss. In terms of land use, lightly grazed pasture contributes the most, accounting for around half of all potential species loss. This loss is concentrated mainly in middle- and low-income regions with rich biodiversity. International trade is an important driver of loss, accounting for 22-29% of total potential plant and vertebrate loss. Our comprehensive global, trade-linked analysis provides insights into maintaining the integrity of KBAs and global biodiversity.

Distinguishing the impacts of land use change in intensity and type on ecosystem services trade-offs.

Changes in land use intensity and types can affect the structure and function of ecosystems, and thus ecosystem services (ESs) as well as their interactions. However, the impacts of changes in land use intensity on ESs remain poorly understood. Through four different land use scenarios, we distinguished the independent contribution of changes in agricultural land use intensity and types to grain production (GP), water purification (WP), and their trade-offs in the Dongting Lake Basin. The results showed that from 1990 to 2015, GP increased across 58.07% of the total area, but WP decreased across 64.81% of the study area. The two ESs simultaneously increased or decreased across 41.93% of the total area. Watersheds covering 48.72% of the study area where GP increased and WP decreased were mainly distributed in areas with increased land use intensity. The other regions where GP decreased and WP increased were mainly distributed in areas with decreased land use intensity. The scenario analysis of GP, WP, and their trade-offs showed that the areas where agricultural land use intensity was the dominant factor were as large as 1.95 times, 2.38 times, and 2.43 times those dominated by land use type respectively, under the same climate conditions. This study highlighted the importance of changes in agricultural land use intensity on ES, which provided further supporting to ES-based land use management.

Farmer surveys in Europe suggest that specialized, intensive farms were more likely to perceive negative impacts from COVID-19.

It has been shown that the COVID-19 pandemic affected some agricultural systems more than others, and even within geographic regions, not all farms were affected to the same extent. To build resilience of agricultural systems to future shocks, it is key to understand which farms were affected and why. In this study, we examined farmers' perceived robustness to COVID-19, a key resilience capacity. We conducted standardized farmer interviews (n = 257) in 15 case study areas across Europe, covering a large range of socio-ecological contexts and farm types. Interviews targeted perceived livelihood impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on productivity, sales, price, labor availability, and supply chains in 2020, as well as farm(er) characteristics and farm management. Our study corroborates earlier evidence that most farms were not or only slightly affected by the first wave(s) of the pandemic in 2020, and that impacts varied widely by study region. However, a significant minority of farmers across Europe reported that the pandemic was "the worst crisis in a lifetime" (3%) or "the worst crisis in a decade" (7%). Statistical analysis showed that more specialized and intensive farms were more likely to have perceived negative impacts. From a societal perspective, this suggests that highly specialized, intensive farms face higher vulnerability to shocks that affect regional to global supply chains. Supporting farmers in the diversification of their production systems while decreasing dependence on service suppliers and supply chain actors may increase their robustness to future disruptions. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00820-5.

Divergent drivers of the microbial methane sink in temperate forest and grassland soils.

Aerated topsoils are important sinks for atmospheric methane (CH4 ) via oxidation by CH4 -oxidizing bacteria (MOB). However, intensified management of grasslands and forests may reduce the CH4 sink capacity of soils. We investigated the influence of grassland land-use intensity (150 sites) and forest management type (149 sites) on potential atmospheric CH4 oxidation rates (PMORs) and the abundance and diversity of MOB (with qPCR) in topsoils of three temperate regions in Germany. PMORs measurements in microcosms under defined conditions yielded approximately twice as much CH4 oxidation in forest than in grassland soils. High land-use intensity of grasslands had a negative effect on PMORs (-40%) in almost all regions and fertilization was the predominant factor of grassland land-use intensity leading to PMOR reduction by 20%. In contrast, forest management did not affect PMORs in forest soils. Upland soil cluster (USC)-α was the dominant group of MOBs in the forests. In contrast, USC-γ was absent in more than half of the forest soils but present in almost all grassland soils. USC-α abundance had a direct positive effect on PMOR in forest, while in grasslands USC-α and USC-γ abundance affected PMOR positively with a more pronounced contribution of USC-γ than USC-α. Soil bulk density negatively influenced PMOR in both forests and grasslands. We further found that the response of the PMORs to pH, soil texture, soil water holding capacity and organic carbon and nitrogen content differ between temperate forest and grassland soils. pH had no direct effects on PMOR, but indirect ones via the MOB abundances, showing a negative effect on USC-α, and a positive on USC-γ abundance. We conclude that reduction in grassland land-use intensity and afforestation has the potential to increase the CH4 sink function of soils and that different parameters determine the microbial methane sink in forest and grassland soils.

Monitoring land use and soil salinity changes in coastal landscape: a case study from Senegal.

Soil salinity is a major issue causing land degradation in coastal areas. In this study, we assessed the land use and soil salinity changes in Djilor district (Senegal) using remote sensing and field data. We performed land use land cover changes for the years 1984, 1994, 2007, and 2017. Electrical conductivity was measured from 300 soil samples collected at the study area; this, together with elevation, distance to river, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Salinity Index (SI), and Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), was used to build the salinity model using a multiple regression analysis. Supervised classification and intensity analysis were applied to determine the annual change area and the variation of gains and losses. The results showed that croplands recorded the highest gain (17%) throughout the period 1984-2017, while forest recorded 3%. The fastest annual area of change occurred during the period 1984-1994. The salinity model showed a high potential for mapping saline areas (R2 = 0.73 and RMSE = 0.68). Regarding salinity change, the slightly saline areas (2 < EC < 4 dS/m) increased by 42% whereas highly saline (EC > 8 dS/m) and moderately saline (4 < EC < 8 dS/m) areas decreased by 23% and 26%, respectively, in 2017. Additionally, the increasing salt content is less dominant in vegetated areas compared with non-vegetated areas. Nonetheless, the highly concentrated salty areas can be restored using salt-resistant plants (e.g., Eucalyptus sp., Tamarix sp.). This study gives more insights on land use planning and salinity management for improving farmers' resilience in coastal regions.

Multiple cropping systems of the world and the potential for increasing cropping intensity.

Multiple cropping, defined as harvesting more than once a year, is a widespread land management strategy in tropical and subtropical agriculture. It is a way of intensifying agricultural production and diversifying the crop mix for economic and environmental benefits. Here we present the first global gridded data set of multiple cropping systems and quantify the physical area of more than 200 systems, the global multiple cropping area and the potential for increasing cropping intensity. We use national and sub-national data on monthly crop-specific growing areas around the year 2000 (1998-2002) for 26 crop groups, global cropland extent and crop harvested areas to identify sequential cropping systems of two or three crops with non-overlapping growing seasons. We find multiple cropping systems on 135 million hectares (12% of global cropland) with 85 million hectares in irrigated agriculture. 34%, 13% and 10% of the rice, wheat and maize area, respectively are under multiple cropping, demonstrating the importance of such cropping systems for cereal production. Harvesting currently single cropped areas a second time could increase global harvested areas by 87-395 million hectares, which is about 45% lower than previous estimates. Some scenarios of intensification indicate that it could be enough land to avoid expanding physical cropland into other land uses but attainable intensification will depend on the local context and the crop yields attainable in the second cycle and its related environmental costs.

The Impact of Environmental Factors on the Efficacy of Chemical Communication in the Burying Beetle (Coleoptera: Silphidae).

There is growing evidence that a wide range of insect sex pheromones are condition dependent and play a fundamental role in mate choice. However, the effectiveness of pheromonal communication might not only depend on internal factors of the sender, but also on attributes of the microhabitat, in which the signaler chooses to emit its chemical signal. For example, the degree of anthropogenic land use might affect how successful the signal is transmitted, as land use has been shown to affect animal communities and the complexity of biotic interactions. To test the hypothesis that parameters of the microenvironment determine males' ability to attract females via their sex pheromone, we used the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides Herbst (Coleoptera: Silphidae) as our model system. We exposed 144 males across differently managed forest stands and analyzed the impact of 29 environmental parameters. Our data revealed that human land use intensity had no effect on a male's attractiveness. However, the harvested tree biomass positively affected the proportion of competitors attracted. Furthermore, we found that soil characteristics were important factors determining the amount and body size of females a male was able to attract. Consequently, we present evidence that the environmental context of a signaling male influences the effectiveness of chemical signaling either because it affects the transmission process or the prevailing abundance of potential signal receivers. Thus, our results demonstrate that males need to make careful decisions about the location where they emit their pheromone, as this choice of microhabitat has an impact on their fitness.

Effectiveness of agri-environmental management on pollinators is moderated more by ecological contrast than by landscape structure or land-use intensity.

Agri-environment management (AEM) started in the 1980s in Europe to mitigate biodiversity decline, but the effectiveness of AEM has been questioned. We hypothesize that this is caused by a lack of a large enough ecological contrast between AEM and non-treated control sites. The effectiveness of AEM may be moderated by landscape structure and land-use intensity. Here, we examined the influence of local ecological contrast, landscape structure and regional land-use intensity on AEM effectiveness in a meta-analysis of 62 European pollinator studies. We found that ecological contrast was most important in determining the effectiveness of AEM, but landscape structure and regional land-use intensity played also a role. In conclusion, the most successful way to enhance AEM effectiveness for pollinators is to implement measures that result in a large ecological improvement at a local scale, which exhibit a strong contrast to conventional practices in simple landscapes of intensive land-use regions.

Adaptation of global land use and management intensity to changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Land use contributes to environmental change, but is also influenced by such changes. Climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 ) levels' changes alter agricultural crop productivity, plant water requirements and irrigation water availability. The global food system needs to respond and adapt to these changes, for example, by altering agricultural practices, including the crop types or intensity of management, or shifting cultivated areas within and between countries. As impacts and associated adaptation responses are spatially specific, understanding the land use adaptation to environmental changes requires crop productivity representations that capture spatial variations. The impact of variation in management practices, including fertiliser and irrigation rates, also needs to be considered. To date, models of global land use have selected agricultural expansion or intensification levels using relatively aggregate spatial representations, typically at a regional level, that are not able to characterise the details of these spatially differentiated responses. Here, we show results from a novel global modelling approach using more detailed biophysically derived yield responses to inputs with greater spatial specificity than previously possible. The approach couples a dynamic global vegetative model (LPJ-GUESS) with a new land use and food system model (PLUMv2), with results benchmarked against historical land use change from 1970. Land use outcomes to 2100 were explored, suggesting that increased intensity of climate forcing reduces the inputs required for food production, due to the fertilisation and enhanced water use efficiency effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but requiring substantial shifts in the global and local patterns of production. The results suggest that adaptation in the global agriculture and food system has substantial capacity to diminish the negative impacts and gain greater benefits from positive outcomes of climate change. Consequently, agricultural expansion and intensification may be lower than found in previous studies where spatial details and processes consideration were more constrained.

Large extents of intensive land use limit community reorganization during climate warming.

Climate change is increasingly altering the composition of ecological communities, in combination with other environmental pressures such as high-intensity land use. Pressures are expected to interact in their effects, but the extent to which intensive human land use constrains community responses to climate change is currently unclear. A generic indicator of climate change impact, the community temperature index (CTI), has previously been used to suggest that both bird and butterflies are successfully 'tracking' climate change. Here, we assessed community changes at over 600 English bird or butterfly monitoring sites over three decades and tested how the surrounding land has influenced these changes. We partitioned community changes into warm- and cold-associated assemblages and found that English bird communities have not reorganized successfully in response to climate change. CTI increases for birds are primarily attributable to the loss of cold-associated species, whilst for butterflies, warm-associated species have tended to increase. Importantly, the area of intensively managed land use around monitoring sites appears to influence these community changes, with large extents of intensively managed land limiting 'adaptive' community reorganization in response to climate change. Specifically, high-intensity land use appears to exacerbate declines in cold-adapted bird and butterfly species, and prevent increases in warm-associated birds. This has broad implications for managing landscapes to promote climate change adaptation.