Data from: Biodiversity conservation in agriculture requires a multi-scale approach

Biodiversity loss—one of the most prominent forms of modern environmental change—has been heavily driven by terrestrial habitat loss and, in particular, the spread and intensification of agriculture. Expanding agricultural land-use has led to the search for strong conservation strategies, with some suggesting that biodiversity conservation in agriculture is best maximized by reducing local management intensity, such as fertilizer and pesticide application. Others highlight the importance of landscape-level approaches that incorporate natural or semi-natural areas in landscapes surrounding farms. Here, we show that both of these practices are valuable to the conservation of biodiversity, and that either local or landscape factors can be most crucial to conservation planning depending on which types of organisms one wishes to save. We performed a quantitative review of 266 observations taken from 31 studies that compared the impacts of localized (within farm) management strategies and landscape complexity (around farms) on the richness and abundance of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate species in agro-ecosystems. While both factors significantly impacted species richness, the richness of sessile plants increased with less-intensive local management, but did not significantly respond to landscape complexity. By contrast, the richness of mobile vertebrates increased with landscape complexity, but did not significantly increase with less-intensive local management. Invertebrate richness and abundance responded to both factors. Our analyses point to clear differences in how various groups of organisms respond to differing scales of management, and suggest that preservation of multiple taxonomic groups will require multiple scales of conservation.生物多样性丧失作为当代最突出的环境变化形式之一，其主要驱动因素为陆地栖息地丧失，尤以农业扩张与集约化程度提升最为显著。 农业用地的扩张催生了强效生物多样性保护策略的探索：部分观点认为，通过降低局域管理强度（如削减化肥与农药施用量），可最大化实现农业生态系统（agro-ecosystems）中的生物多样性保护；另有研究强调景观尺度保护方法的重要性，即整合农场周边的自然或半自然生境。 本研究证实，上述两类实践均对生物多样性保护具有价值，而究竟局域管理因素还是景观尺度因素对保护规划更为关键，取决于目标保护的生物类群。 我们对31项相关研究中的266组观测数据开展了定量综述，这些研究对比了局域（农场内部）管理策略与农场周边景观复杂度对农业生态系统内植物、无脊椎动物及脊椎动物的物种丰富度与个体多度的影响。 尽管两类因素均对物种丰富度存在显著影响：固着植物的丰富度随局域管理强度降低而提升，但对景观复杂度无显著响应；与之相反，移动脊椎动物的丰富度随景观复杂度提升而显著增加，却未因局域管理强度降低而明显增多。无脊椎动物的丰富度与个体多度则对两类因素均有显著响应。 本研究的分析结果清晰揭示了不同生物类群对不同尺度管理措施的响应差异，并表明，若要保护多个分类学类群，需采用多尺度的保护方案。