Effect of cattle silvopastoral systems relative to forests on the diversity, richness, and abundance of macroinvertebrates

This comparison provides a supplementary vote count analysis for the article, “Meta-analysis shows overall benefits of cattle silvopastoral systems for biodiversity in fragmented forest landscapes,” submitted to the journal Ecological Applications. The meta-analysis examines the effect of silvopastoral systems (SPS) relative to treeless pastures and forests on three measures of biodiversity (species richness, abundance, and diversity) across seven taxa (birds, dung beetles, insects other than dung beetles, vertebrates, plants, soil bacteria and fungi, and soil macroinvertebrates). To do this, we calculated standardized effect sizes (log response ratios) that combine species richness, abundance, and diversity values reported in the 45 scientific documents included in our meta-analysis.

We use this ORKG comparison to conduct a simple vote count of SPS effects based on the values originally reported in these documents, focusing on the effect of SPS relative to forests on macroinvertebrates (n=15 contributions, referred to as effect sizes in the meta-analysis). In 5 out of the 15 contributions, there was no significant difference in macroinvertebrate biodiversity between SPS and forests. Two contributions showed a negative effect of SPS on macroinvertebrate biodiversity, while one contribution reported a positive effect. Seven contributions lacked a corresponding comparative statistical analysis, indicated by “NA” in the “outcome” row. Therefore, it is difficult to compare the vote count outcome with the meta-analysis, which revealed no significant difference between SPS and forests for this taxon.

Please note that the document, “Evaluation of the macrofauna as indicator of the health status in seven land use systems, in Cuba” by Cabrera-Dávila et al. (2017) was included in the meta-analysis, but was not included in this ORKG comparison because it did not meet the platform’s requirements.