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Insect pollination, despite its potential to contribute substantially to crop production, is not an integrated part of agronomic planning. A major reason for this are knowledge gaps in the contribution of pollinators to yield, which partly result from difficulties in determining area-based estimates of yield effects from insect pollination under field conditions. We have experimentally manipulated
The species richness of flower-visiting insects has declined in past decades, raising concerns that the ecosystem service they provide by pollinating crops and wild plants is threatened. The relative commonness of different species with shared ecological traits can play a pervasive role in determining ecosystem functioning, but information on changes in abundances of pollinators over time is lacki
Agricultural intensification is recognised as a major driver of biodiversity loss in human-modified landscapes. Several agro-environmental measures at different spatial scales have been suggested to mitigate the negative impact of intensification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The effect of these measures on the functional structure of service-providing communities remains, however, large
Resilience of ecological communities to perturbation is important in the face of increased global change from anthropogenic stressors. Monitoring is required to detect the impact of, and recovery from, perturbations, and before-after-control-impact (BACI) analysis provides a powerful framework in this regard. However, species in a community are not observed with perfect detection, and occupancy an
Pollination by bees is important for food production. Recent concerns about the declines of both domestic and wild bees, calls for measures to promote wild pollinator populations in farmland. However, to be able to efficiently promote and prioritize between measures that benefit pollinators, such as modified land use, agri-environment schemes, or specific conservation measures, it is important to
Organic farming has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination. However, it is not known if a similar effect can be generated on conventional farms, without reducing external inputs such as inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, by using more complex crop rotations including ley for animal fodder production. In two separate designs, both located in southern Sweden, we test
To address the challenges of biodiversity conservation and commodity production, a framework has been proposed that distinguishes between the integration (land sharing) and separation (land sparing) of conservation and production. Controversy has arisen around this framework partly because many scholars have focused specifically on food production rather than more encompassing notions such as land
Abstract in UndeterminedIn recent years, there has been a marked proliferation in the literature on economic approaches to ecosystem management, which has created a subsequent need for real understanding of the scope and the limits of the economic approaches to ecosystems and biodiversity. Within this Handbook, carefully commissioned original contributions from acknowledged experts in the field ad
It has been suggested that the widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides threatens bees, but research on this topic has been surrounded by controversy. In order to synthesize which research approaches have been used to examine the effect of neonicotinoids on bees and to identify knowledge gaps, we systematically reviewed research on this subject that was available on the Web of Science and PubM
Agriculture's reliance on ecosystem services creates economic and ecological interdependencies between crop production and biodiversity. Interactions with mobile organisms are particularly complex because they depend on the spatial configuration of habitat at large scales. As such conserving habitat is likely to benefit multiple farmers whereas conservation costs are born individually, creating po
Background: Soils contain the largest stock of organic carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems and changes in soil C stocks may significantly affect atmospheric CO2. A significant part of soil C is present in cultivated soils that occupy about 35 % of the global land surface. Agricultural intensification has led to practices that may decrease soil organic carbon (SOC), and agricultural management has
Research relating to ecosystem services has increased, partly because of drastic declines in biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. However, the mechanistic linkages between land use, biodiversity and service provision are poorly understood and synthesized. This is particularly true for many ecosystem services provided by mobile organisms such as natural enemies to crop pests. These species are
Recent research has shown that agricultural management affects microbial biomass and community composition. We investigated the functional implications of such effects in terms of barley biomass production and nutrient acquisition, and whether changes in barley nutrient status affected aphid fecundity. Soils were collected from conventional, ley and organic arable fields and used as inocula in a g
Bumblebee communities and their foraging resources were surveyed in south Swedish agricultural landscapes of contrasting complexity, defined by the size of arable fields and the amount of permanent grazed pastures. After the flowering of oilseed rape (OSR), simplified landscapes contained substantially less herbaceous flower resources and a lower proportion of perennials, compared to complex ones.
Pollination of insect pollinated crops has been found to be correlated to pollinator abundance and diversity. Since organic farming has the potential to mitigate negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity, it may also benefit crop pollination, but direct evidence of this is scant. We evaluated the effect of organic farming on pollination of strawberry plants focusing on (1) i
In order to improve biological control of agricultural pests, it is fundamental to understand which factors influence the composition of natural enemies in agricultural landscapes. In this study, we aimed to understand how agricultural land use affects a number of different traits in ground beetle communities to better predict potential consequences of land-use change for ecosystem functioning. We
Land-use change is a major driver of the global loss of biodiversity, but it is unclear to what extent this also results in a loss of ecological traits. Therefore, a better understanding of how land-use change affects ecological traits is crucial for efforts to sustain functional diversity. To this end we tested whether higher species richness or taxonomic distinctness generally leads to increased
We tested how dispersal capacity, host plant specificity and reproductive rate influenced the effects of farming system and landscape composition on butterfly species richness and abundance. In no case did variation in these traits explain species responses to organic farming, indicating that all species benefit equally. In contrast, butterflies with high mobility and reproductive rate were dispro
CapsuleHouse Sparrow (Passer domesticus) populations in south Swedish farmland are not affected by supplemental winter feeding, irrespective of agricultural landscape type or presence of animal husbandry, although winter populations declined more in mixed farmland and when farms contained animal husbandry. AimsTo investigate whether food limitation of House Sparrow population size during the winte
