TY - JOUR A1 - Bucher, Roman A1 - Djoudi, El Aziz A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus T1 - Land‑use impacts on crop yield : direct and indirect roles of arthropods and associated ecosystem services in European farmland JF - Landscape Ecology N2 - Land-use intensification to increase yields is often detrimental to biodiversity undermining the provision of ecosystem services. However, it is questionable if ecosystem service providers contribute to ecological intensification by achieving the same or higher yields than conventional high-intensity agriculture. In this study, we aimed to disentangle the effects of local and landscape-scale land-use intensification on arthropod communities and their contribution to ecosystem services and crop yield. A set of meta-analytic structural equation models allowed us to assess direct and indirect relationships in the cascade from land use to yield. We selected 37 datasets containing information on land use, community composition, levels of pollination and natural pest control services, and crop yield. We quantified functional diversity of communities by collecting trait information for three exemplary groups of service-providers: bees, ground beetles, and spiders. Local land-use intensification reduced the abundance of all arthropod groups. Spiders were the only group whose species richness was negatively related to a higher percentage of arable land in the landscape. High abundance of bees related positively to oilseed rape pollination and crop yields. In the models for the two predator groups, crop yield was strongly determined by land use, independent of the pest control services provided by natural enemies. Our results suggest a potential for ecological intensification mediated by land-use change in crops where pollination benefits yield, but suggest more nuanced effects for pest control. Our study also calls for experiments on multiple taxonomic groups and ecosystem services that apply comparable methods at similar scales. KW - Agroecology KW - Ecological intensification KW - Meta-analytic structural equation models KW - Pollination KW - Pest control Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-025-02117-w SN - 1572-9761 VL - 40 PB - Springer Nature CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Menares, Esteban A1 - Saíz, Hugo A1 - Schenk, Noëlle A1 - Riva, Enrique G. de la A1 - Kraus, Jochen A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus T1 - Co-occrrence patterns do not predict mutualistic interactions between plant and butterfly species JF - Ecology and Evolution N2 - Biotic interactions are crucial for determining the structure and dynamics of communities; however, direct measurement of these interactions can be challenging in terms of time and resources, especially when numerous species are involved. Inferring species interactions from species co-occurrence patterns is increasingly being used; however, recent studies have highlighted some limitations. To our knowledge, no attempt has been made to test the accuracy of the existing methods for detecting mutualistic interactions in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we compiled two literature-based, long-term datasets of interactions between butterflies and herbaceous plant species in two regions of Germany and compared them with observational abundance and presence/absence data collected within a year in the same regions. We tested how well the species associations generated by three different co-occurrence analysis methods matched those of empirically measured mutualistic associations using sensitivity and specificity analyses and compared the strength of associations. We also checked whether flower abundance data (instead of plant abundance data) increased the accuracy of the co-occurrence models and validated our results using empirical flower visitation data. The results revealed that, although all methods exhibited low sensitivity, our implementation of the Relative Interaction Intensity index with pairwise null models performed the best, followed by the probabilistic method and Spearman's rank correlation method. However, empirical data showed a significant number of interactions that were not detected using co-occurrence methods. Incorporating flower abundance data did not improve sensitivity but enhanced specificity in one region. Further analysis demonstrated incongruence between the predicted co-occurrence associations and actual interaction strengths, with many pairs exhibiting high interaction strength but low co-occurrence or vice versa. These findings underscore the complexity of ecological dynamics and highlight the limitations of current co-occurrence methods for accurately capturing species interactions. KW - Biodiversity exploratories KW - Co-occurrence analysis KW - Flower visitations KW - Mutualistic interactions KW - Species associations Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70498 SN - 2045-7758 VL - 14 IS - 11 PB - Wiley CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Djoudi, El Aziz A1 - Amossé, Ewen A1 - Aviron, Stéphanie A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus A1 - Libereau, Benjamin A1 - Plantegenest, Manuel A1 - Pétillon, Julien T1 - Multi‑trophic arthropod communities modulated by local farming system and landscape heterogeneity JF - Landscape Ecology N2 - Organic farming is increasingly used worldwide in recent decades, but the role of this farming system in shaping the trophic structure of arthropod communities remains poorly understood, especially at different spatial scales. Therefore, the contribution of landscape heterogeneity in shaping arthropod’s trophic guilds remain understudied. In this study, we assessed how the evenness, the abundance and the taxonomic richness of arthropod trophic groups were shaped by the local farming system, landscape heterogeneity (including the percentage of semi-natural habitats and organic fields), and their interaction. Arthropod’s trophic guilds (ground and vegetation-dwelling) were sampled in 20 spatial independent pairs of conventional (CF) and organic (OF) fields located in Brittany (Western France) by using pitfall traps and sweep nets replicated in time and space. A total of 95,822 arthropods belonging to 197 taxonomic groups were sampled. Farming system has a strong overall positive effect on the community structure of both ground- and vegetation-dwelling arthropods. Landscape heterogeneity, alone and in interaction with farming systems, affected positively the diversity and abundance of most trophic groups for both ground- and vegetation-dwelling arthropods. Organic farming therefore affected the trophic composition of arthropod communities not only locally, but also at the landscape scale. Our study highlights the strong positive effect of farming system and the landscape heterogeneity on arthropod communities and more importantly the interconnection between different spatial scales in this process. Taking these aspects into account is therefore crucial in understanding arthropod community dynamics in agroecosystems. KW - Agroecology KW - Agricultural geography KW - Biodiversity KW - Landscape ecology KW - Organic farming Y1 - 2026 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-026-02298-y SN - 1572-9761 VL - 41 PB - Springer Nature CY - Berlin ER -