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Functional beetle diversity in managed grasslands: effects of region, landscape context and land use intensity

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Abstract

Current biodiversity conservation policies have so far had limited success because they are mainly targeted to the scale of individual fields with little concern on different responses of organism groups at larger spatial scales. We investigated the relative impacts of multi-scale factors, including local land use intensity, landscape context and region, on functional groups of beetles (Coleoptera). In 2008, beetles were suction-sampled from 95 managed grasslands in three regions, ranging from Southern to Northern Germany. The results showed that region was the most important factor affecting the abundance of herbivores and the abundance and species composition of predators and decomposers. Herbivores were not affected by landscape context and land use intensity. The species composition of the predator communities changed with land use intensity, but only in interaction with landscape context. Interestingly, decomposer abundance was negatively related to land use intensity in low-diversity landscapes, whereas in high-diversity landscapes the relation was positive, possibly due to enhanced spillover effects in complex landscapes. We conclude that (i) management at multiple scales, from local sites to landscapes and regions, is essential for managing biodiversity, (ii) beetle predators and decomposers are more affected than herbivores, supporting the hypothesis that higher trophic levels are more sensitive to environmental change, and (iii) sustaining biological control and decomposition services in managed grassland needs a diverse landscape, while effects of local land use intensity may depend on landscape context.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the managers of the three exploratories, Swen Renner, Sonja Gockel, Kerstin Wiesner, and Martin Gorke for their work in maintaining the plot and project infrastructure; Simone Pfeiffer and Christiane Fischer giving support through the central office, Michael Owonibi for managing the central data base, and Markus Fischer, Eduard Linsenmair, Dominik Hessenmöller, Jens Nieschulze, Daniel Prati, Ingo Schöning, François Buscot, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Wolfgang W. Weisser and the late Elisabeth Kalko for their role in setting up the Biodiversity Exploratories project. We are very grateful to Boris Büche for his great help with the identification of beetles and classification of feeding types. We thank Michaela Bellach for her valuable contribution to the land use data. The work has been partly funded by the DFG Priority Program 1374 “Infrastructure-Biodiversity-Exploratories” (DFG- Ts45/28-1.). Field work permits were issued by the responsible state environmental offices of Baden-Württemberg, Thüringen, and Brandenburg (according to § 72 BbgNatSchG). Y. L. was supported by China Scholarship Council, P. B. was supported the German Research Foundation (DFG BA 4438/1-1) and C. W. was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (DLR 01LL0917D). We also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments, which were of great help in improving the paper.

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  1. Yunhui Liu

    Present address: College of Agricultural Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agroecology, Department of Crop Sciences, Georg-August-University, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Yunhui Liu, Christoph Rothenwöhrer, Christoph Scherber, Péter Batáry, Teja Tscharntke & Catrin Westphal

  2. MTA-ELTE-MTM, Ecology Research Group, Budapest, 1117, Hungary

    Zoltán Elek

  3. Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Wuerzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Wuerzburg, Germany

    Juliane Steckel

  4. Institute of Geography, Georg-August-University, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Stefan Erasmi

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10980_2014_9987_MOESM1_ESM.tiff

Appendix 1 Site biplots of partial RDA ordinations for feeding types with region as a constraints variable, and landscape diversity and land use intensity as conditioned variables (TIFF 195 kb)

Appendix S1 Sampling plots in the study regions reported as a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file (DOC 269 kb)

Supplementary Material 3 (KMZ 3 kb)

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Liu, Y., Rothenwöhrer, C., Scherber, C. et al. Functional beetle diversity in managed grasslands: effects of region, landscape context and land use intensity. Landscape Ecol 29, 529–540 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-014-9987-0

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