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Adjacent woodlands rather than habitat connectivity influence grassland plant, carabid and bird assemblages in farmland landscapes

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Abstract

One response to biodiversity decline is the definition of ecological networks that extend beyond protected areas and promote connectivity in human-dominated landscapes. In farmland, landscape ecological research has focused more on wooded than open habitat networks. In our study, we assessed the influence of permanent grassland connectivity, described by grassland amount and spatial configuration, on grassland biodiversity. We selected permanent grasslands in livestock farming areas of north-western France, which were sampled for plants, carabids and birds. At two spatial scales we tested the effects of amount and configuration of grasslands, wooded habitats and crops on richness and abundance of total assemblages and species ecological groups. Grassland connectivity had no significant effects on total richness or abundance of any taxonomic group, regardless of habitat affinity or dispersal ability. The amount of wooded habitat and length of wooded edges at the 200 m scale positively influenced forest and generalist animal groups as well as grassland plant species, in particular animal-dispersed species. However, for animal groups such as open habitat carabids or farmland bird specialists, the same wooded habitats negatively influenced richness and abundance at the 500 m scale. The scale and direction of biodiversity responses to landscape context were therefore similar among taxonomic groups, but opposite for habitat affinity groups. We conclude that while grassland connectivity is unlikely to contribute positively to biodiversity, increasing or maintaining wooded elements near grasslands would be a worthwhile conservation goal. However, the requirements of open farmland animal species groups must be considered, for which such action may be deleterious.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Frédéric Vaidie, Vincent Oury, Jean-Luc Roger and Marie Jagaille for assistance with field and laboratory work. We are also grateful to Mathias Templin, Christian Hof, Matthias Schleuning, Irina Nicholas, Katrin Böhning-Gaese for sharing bird measurements used to calculate the dispersal ability predictor. This study was financed by the French Ministry for the Environment (DIVA 3: public policy, agriculture & biodiversity), the Conseil Régional des Pays de la Loire (URBIO: Biodiversity of Urban Areas), and Angers Loire Métropole (post-doctoral grant). The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedbacks on earlier version of the manuscript.

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  1. BAGAP, INRA, Agrocampus Ouest, ESA, 2 rue André Le Nôtre, 49045, Angers Cedex 01, France

    Rémi Duflot, Hervé Daniel, Véronique Beaujouan, Arnaud Cochard, Guillaume Pain & Joséphine A. Pithon

  2. BAGAP, INRA, Agrocampus Ouest, ESA, Rennes, France

    Stéphanie Aviron & Audrey Alignier

  3. Ecobio, CNRS, Université de Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Françoise Burel & Aude Ernoult

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  1. Rémi Duflot
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Duflot, R., Daniel, H., Aviron, S. et al. Adjacent woodlands rather than habitat connectivity influence grassland plant, carabid and bird assemblages in farmland landscapes. Biodivers Conserv 27, 1925–1942 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1517-y

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