Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Ecol Lett. 2024 Apr;27(4):e14411. doi: 10.1111/ele.14411.
Intensified agriculture, a driver of biodiversity loss, can diminish ecosystem functions and their stability. Biodiversity can increase functional redundancy and is expected to stabilize ecosystem functions. Few studies, however, have explored how agricultural intensity affects functional redundancy and its link with ecosystem function stability. Here, within a continental-wide study, we assess how functional redundancy of seed predation is affected by agricultural intensity and landscape simplification. By combining carabid abundances with molecular gut content data, functional redundancy of seed predation was quantified for 65 weed genera across 60 fields in four European countries. Across weed genera, functional redundancy was reduced with high field management intensity and simplified crop rotations. Moreover, functional redundancy increased the spatial stability of weed seed predation at the field scale. We found that ecosystem functions are vulnerable to disturbances in intensively managed agroecosystems, providing empirical evidence of the importance of biodiversity for stable ecosystem functions across space.
集约化农业是生物多样性丧失的驱动因素，它会降低生态系统功能及其稳定性。生物多样性可以增加功能冗余，并有望稳定生态系统功能。然而，很少有研究探讨农业集约化程度如何影响功能冗余及其与生态系统功能稳定性的联系。在这里，在一项全大陆范围内的研究中，我们评估了种子捕食的功能冗余如何受到农业集约化和景观简化的影响。通过结合地表甲虫丰度和分子肠道内容物数据，我们在四个欧洲国家的 60 个农田中对 65 种杂草属的种子捕食功能冗余进行了量化。在整个杂草属中，高田间管理强度和简化的轮作会降低功能冗余。此外，功能冗余增加了田间尺度上杂草种子捕食的空间稳定性。我们发现，生态系统功能容易受到集约化农业生态系统干扰的影响，为生物多样性对跨空间稳定生态系统功能的重要性提供了经验证据。
