Auswirkungen historischen Landnutzungswandels auf Artenreichtum und Zusammensetzung von Artengemeinschaften in fragmentierten und neu geschaffenen Habitaten (HiLUCC)
Ökologie und Biodiversität der Tiere und Ökosysteme, Organismische Interaktionen
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Aside from land-use intensity, biodiversity in grassland ecosystems may depend on the structure of the surrounding landscape, particularly the spatial configuration of grassland habitat patches, which modifies processes determining species richness and community composition of animals and plants, such as dispersal, colonisation and local extinction of species. Previous research has shown that land use and landscape structure may have long-lasting effects on current communities and biodiversity. In the frame of the Biodiversity Exploratories (BE), we investigated how species richness and trait composition of arthropod (Araneae, Coleoptera) and plant communities on grasslands are affected by historical land use and landscape structure, in addition to current land-use intensity. We hypothesised that historical landscape structure is more important than the current one. More specifically, we hypothesized that historical grassland connectivity is a main driver of species richness and traits on newly established grasslands (after 1960) and that fragmentation of old grasslands affects persistence traits and leads to an extinction debt. Furthermore, we analysed how species’ traits modify the effects of land use and landscape structure through modelling trait-environment interactions. As a prerequisite, we created digital maps of historical land use/ land cover (LULC) based on historical topographic maps from the 19th century (1820-1850), the 1930s and 1960s in a Geographic Information System (GIS) that covered 2-km radii around the 150 Experimental Plots (EP) on grasslands. We used the digital historical LULC maps to determine the land-use type of the EP sites for all historical dates and to assess local land-use change. Further, we calculated landscape metrics that measure the size, shape and connectivity of grassland patches as well as the overall landscape composition and land-cover diversity at multiple spatial scales (100–1000 m radius) and for all historical dates as well as for the current state (year 2008). Furthermore, we assessed the stability of grassland cover at landscape level by means of a new index of grassland permanency. An analysis of land-use change in the BE revealed that the area of grasslands increased substantially in the regions Hainich-Dün and Schorfheide-Chorin since the 1960s and that 69 grassland EP were located on newly established grasslands (after 1960). Contrary to our expectation, only a minor proportion of the grassland EP (15) were located on grassland patches that had faced substantial fragmentation during the last 150 years. Therefore, we could not study fragmentation effects, but conducted the statistical analyses of species richness and trait composition for EP on newly established grasslands and for all 150 EP, respectively. We analysed species richness of arthropods and plants with Generalised Linear Models (GLM) using a forward selection approach to identify the best predictors and the best-fitting spatial scales and dates of landscape metrics. We found that species richness was affected significantly more strongly by historical landscape structure than the current one for plants, particularly grassland specialists, and for arthropods, particularly herbivorous and dispersal-limited species. However, we did not find the hypothesised connectivity effect on species richness. The analysis of community trait composition showed that historical landscape structure was as important as local factors, such as land-use intensity. Further, historical landscape metrics explained traits of arthropods, but not plants, better than current ones. Conversely, the connectivity effect could only be confirmed for plant traits. In the final step, we modelled interactions of the effects of landscape metrics and other predictors with species’ traits. We could identify significant interactions of dispersal capacity and grassland specialisation of arthropods with the area and dispersion of grassland in the landscape. Regarding plants, we found interactions of life-cycle type with grassland area and of habitat preference and life cycle with grassland permanency. Altogether this study provides evidence that historical land use and landscape structure have lasting effects on communities of arthropods and plants both in terms of species richness and traits. Arthropods’ traits are even more strongly affected by landscape history than those of plants. The effects of landscape structure in general, and also historical effects, depend substantially on species’ traits, particularly on habitat specialisation and dispersal capacity (arthropods) or life cycle (plants).
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
-
Contrasting responses of above- and belowground diversity to multiple components of land-use intensity. Nature Communications, 12(1).
Le Provost, Gaëtane; Thiele, Jan; Westphal, Catrin; Penone, Caterina; Allan, Eric; Neyret, Margot; van der Plas, Fons; Ayasse, Manfred; Bardgett, Richard D.; Birkhofer, Klaus; Boch, Steffen; Bonkowski, Michael; Buscot, Francois; Feldhaar, Heike; Gaulton, Rachel; Goldmann, Kezia; Gossner, Martin M.; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; ... & Manning, Peter
-
Present and historical landscape structure shapes current species richness in Central European grasslands. Landscape Ecology, 37(3), 745-762.
Scherreiks, Pascal; Gossner, Martin M.; Ambarlı, Didem; Ayasse, Manfred; Blüthgen, Nico; Fischer, Markus; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; Neff, Felix; Prati, Daniel; Seibold, Sebastian; Simons, Nadja K.; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Wells, Konstans; Westphal, Catrin & Thiele, Jan
-
The supply of multiple ecosystem services requires biodiversity across spatial scales. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 7(2), 236-249.
Le Provost, Gaëtane; Schenk, Noëlle V.; Penone, Caterina; Thiele, Jan; Westphal, Catrin; Allan, Eric; Ayasse, Manfred; Blüthgen, Nico; Boeddinghaus, Runa S.; Boesing, Andrea Larissa; Bolliger, Ralph; Busch, Verena; Fischer, Markus; Gossner, Martin M.; Hölzel, Norbert; Jung, Kirsten; Kandeler, Ellen; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; ... & Manning, Peter
