A comparison of land-sharing and land-sparing strategies for plant richness conservation in agricultural landscapes.

Strategies for conserving plant diversity in agroecosystems generally focus on either expanding land area in non-crop habitat or enhancing diversity within crop fields through changes in within-field management practices. In this study, we compare effects on landscape-scale species richness from such land-sharing or land-sparing strategies. We collected data in arable field, grassland, pasture, and forest habitat types (1.6 ha sampled per habitat type) across a 100-km2 region of farmland in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA. We fitted species-area relationships (SARs) for each habitat type and then combined extrapolations from the curves with estimates of community overlap to estimate richness in a 314.5-ha landscape. We then modified these baseline estimates by adjusting parameters in the SAR models to compare potential effects of land-sharing and land-sparing conservation practices on landscape richness. We found that species richness of the habitat types showed a strong inverse relationship to the relative land area of each type in the region, with 89 species in arable fields (66.5% of total land area), 153 in pastures (6.7%), 196 in forests (5.2%), and 213 in grasslands (2.9%). Relative to the baseline scenario, major changes in the richness of arable fields produced gains in landscape-scale richness comparable to a conversion of 3.1% of arable field area into grassland habitat. Sensitivity analysis of our model indicated that relative gains from land sparing would be greatest in landscapes with a low amount of non-crop habitat in the baseline scenario, but that in more complex landscapes land sharing would provide greater gains. These results indicate that the majority of plant species in agroecosystems are found in small fragments of non-crop habitat and suggest that, especially in landscapes with little non-crop habitat, richness can be more readily conserved through land-sparing approaches.

Effects of the herbicide dicamba on nontarget plants and pollinator visitation.

Nearly 80% of all pesticides applied to row crops are herbicides, and these applications pose potentially significant ecotoxicological risks to nontarget plants and associated pollinators. In response to the widespread occurrence of weed species resistant to glyphosate, biotechnology companies have developed crops resistant to the synthetic-auxin herbicides dicamba and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D); and once commercialized, adoption of these crops is likely to change herbicide-use patterns. Despite current limited use, dicamba and 2,4-D are often responsible for injury to nontarget plants; but effects of these herbicides on insect communities are poorly understood. To understand the influence of dicamba on pollinators, the authors applied several sublethal, drift-level rates of dicamba to alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and Eupatorium perfoliatum L. and evaluated plant flowering and floral visitation by pollinators. The authors found that dicamba doses simulating particle drift (≈1% of the field application rate) delayed onset of flowering and reduced the number of flowers of each plant species; however, plants that did flower produced similar-quality pollen in terms of protein concentrations. Further, plants affected by particle drift rates were visited less often by pollinators. Because plants exposed to sublethal levels of dicamba may produce fewer floral resources and be less frequently visited by pollinators, use of dicamba or other synthetic-auxin herbicides with widespread planting of herbicide-resistant crops will need to be carefully stewarded to prevent potential disturbances of plant and beneficial insect communities in agricultural landscapes.

A comparison of the herbicide tolerances of rare and common plants in an agricultural landscape.

Declining plant biodiversity in agroecosystems has often been attributed to escalating use of chemical herbicides, but other changes in farming systems, including the clearing of seminatural habitat fragments, confound the influence of herbicides. The present study introduces a new approach to evaluate the impacts of herbicide pollution on plant communities at landscape or regional scales. If herbicides are in fact a key factor shaping agricultural plant diversity, one would expect to see the signal of past herbicide impacts in the current plant community composition of an intensively farmed region, with common, successful species more tolerant to widely used herbicides than rare or declining species. Data from an extensive field survey of plant diversity in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA, were compared with herbicide bioassay experiments in a greenhouse to test the hypothesis that common species possess higher herbicide tolerances than rare species. Five congeneric pairs of rare and common species were treated with 3 commonly used herbicide modes of action in bioassay experiments, and few significant differences were found in the tolerances of rare species relative to common species. These preliminary results suggest that other factors beyond herbicide exposure may be more important in shaping the distribution and abundance of plant species diversity across an agricultural landscape.

Habitat availability is a more plausible explanation than insecticide acute toxicity for U.S. grassland bird species declines.

Grassland bird species have experienced substantial declines in North America. These declines have been largely attributed to habitat loss and degradation, especially from agricultural practices and intensification (the habitat-availability hypothesis). A recent analysis of North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) "grassland breeding" bird trends reported the surprising conclusion that insecticide acute toxicity was a better correlate of grassland bird declines in North America from 1980-2003 (the insecticide-acute-toxicity hypothesis) than was habitat loss through agricultural intensification. In this paper we reached the opposite conclusion. We used an alternative statistical approach with additional habitat covariates to analyze the same grassland bird trends over the same time frame. Grassland bird trends were positively associated with increases in area of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands and cropland used as pasture, whereas the effect of insecticide acute toxicity on bird trends was uncertain. Our models suggested that acute insecticide risk potentially has a detrimental effect on grassland bird trends, but models representing the habitat-availability hypothesis were 1.3-21.0 times better supported than models representing the insecticide-acute-toxicity hypothesis. Based on point estimates of effect sizes, CRP area and agricultural intensification had approximately 3.6 and 1.6 times more effect on grassland bird trends than lethal insecticide risk, respectively. Our findings suggest that preserving remaining grasslands is crucial to conserving grassland bird populations. The amount of grassland that has been lost in North America since 1980 is well documented, continuing, and staggering whereas insecticide use greatly declined prior to the 1990s. Grassland birds will likely benefit from the de-intensification of agricultural practices and the interspersion of pastures, Conservation Reserve Program lands, rangelands and other grassland habitats into existing agricultural landscapes.

Direct and indirect effects of the synthetic-auxin herbicide dicamba on two lepidopteran species.

Herbicides are the most commonly applied pesticides in agroecosystems, and therefore pose potentially significant ecotoxicological risks to plants and insects. Glyphosate is the most common herbicide worldwide, and glyphosate-resistant weeds are quickly becoming serious challenges in some agroecosystems. Because of this resistance epidemic and the recent development of crops with resistance to dicamba or 2,4-D, herbicide-use patterns are likely to change. Presently, dicamba and 2,4-D cause most herbicide-drift damage to nontarget plants despite limited agricultural usage, but the effects of these synthetic auxin herbicides on insects have been poorly explored. To understand the influence of dicamba on insects, we applied several sublethal, drift-level rates of dicamba to soybean, Glycine max L., and Carduus thistle, and measured growth and survival of Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) and Vanessa cardui (L.) larvae, respectively. For thistle, we measured percent nitrogen content before and after dicamba application. We also performed direct toxicity bioassays on the two caterpillar species with several rates of dicamba. Dicamba was not directly toxic to larvae of either species, and H. zea showed no negative effects when feeding on soybeans dosed with dicamba. We did, however, detect significant negative, indirect effects of higher rates of dicamba on V. cardui larval and pupal mass, total nitrogen of thistles post application, and thistle biomass in the presence of V. cardui larvae. Notably, thistle biomass was not related to dicamba dose in absence of larvae. Our results indicate that dicamba can indirectly influence the performance of some caterpillar species, possibly by altering plant nutritional content.

Quantifying vapor drift of dicamba herbicides applied to soybean.

Recent advances in biotechnology have produced cultivars of corn, soybean, and cotton resistant to the synthetic-auxin herbicide dicamba. This technology will allow dicamba herbicides to be applied in new crops, at new periods in the growing season, and over greatly expanded areas, including postemergence applications in soybean. From past and current use in corn and small grains, dicamba vapor drift and subsequent crop injury to sensitive broadleaf crops has been a frequent problem. In the present study, the authors measured dicamba vapor drift in the field from postemergence applications to soybean using greenhouse-grown soybean as a bioassay system. They found that when the volatile dimethylamine formulation is applied, vapor drift could be detected at mean concentrations of 0.56 g acid equivalent dicamba/ha (0.1% of the applied rate) at 21 m away from a treated 18.3 × 18.3 m plot. Applying the diglycolamine formulation of dicamba reduced vapor drift by 94.0%. With the dimethylamine formulation, the extent and severity of vapor drift was significantly correlated with air temperature, indicating elevated risks if dimethylamine dicamba is applied early to midsummer in many growing regions. Additional research is needed to more fully understand the effects of vapor drift exposures to nontarget crops and wild plants.

Effects of genetic perturbation on seasonal life history plasticity.

Like many species, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana exhibits multiple different life histories in natural environments. We grew mutants impaired in different signaling pathways in field experiments across the species' native European range in order to dissect the mechanisms underlying this variation. Unexpectedly, mutational loss at loci implicated in the cold requirement for flowering had little effect on life history except in late-summer cohorts. A genetically informed photothermal model of progression toward flowering explained most of the observed variation and predicted an abrupt transition from autumn flowering to spring flowering in late-summer germinants. Environmental signals control the timing of this transition, creating a critical window of acute sensitivity to genetic and climatic change that may be common for seasonally regulated life history traits.