Data from: Tillage and herbicide reduction mitigate the gap between conventional and organic farming effects on foraging activity of insectivorous bats

The increased use of pesticides and tillage intensification is known to
negatively affect biodiversity. Changes in these agricultural practices
such as herbicide and tillage reduction have variable effects among taxa,
especially at the top of the trophic network including insectivorous bats.
Very few studies compared the effects of agricultural practices on such
taxa, and overall, only as a comparison of conventional versus organic
farming without accurately accounting for underlying practices, especially
in conventional where many alternatives exist. Divergent results founded
in these previous studies could be driven by this lack of clarification
about some unconsidered practices inside both conventional and organic
systems. We simultaneously compared, over whole nights, bat activity on
contiguous wheat fields of one organic and three conventional farming
systems located in an intensive agricultural landscape. The studied
organic fields (OT) used tillage (i.e., inversion of soil) without
chemical inputs. In studied conventional fields, differences consisted of
the following: tillage using few herbicides (T), conservation tillage
(i.e., no inversion of soil) using few herbicides (CT), and conservation
tillage using more herbicide (CTH), to control weeds. Using 64 recording
sites (OT = 12; T = 21; CT = 13; CTH = 18), we sampled several sites per
system placed inside the fields each night. We showed that bat activity
was always higher in OT than in T systems for two (Pipistrellus kuhlii and
Pipistrellus pipistrellus) of three species and for one (Pipistrellus
spp.) of two genera, as well as greater species richness. The same results
were found for the CT versus T system comparison. CTH system showed higher
activity than T for only one genus (Pipistrellus spp.). We did not detect
any differences between OT and CT systems, and CT showed higher activity
than CTH system for only one species (Pipistrellus kuhlii). Activity in OT
of Pipistrellus spp. was overall 3.6 and 9.3 times higher than CTH and T
systems, respectively, and 6.9 times higher in CT than T systems. Our
results highlight an important benefit of organic farming and contrasted
effects in conventional farming. That there were no differences detected
between the organic and one conventional system is a major result. This
demonstrates that even if organic farming is presently difficult to
implement and requires a change of economic context for farmers,
considerable and easy improvements in conventional farming are attainable,
while maintaining yields and approaching the ecological benefits of
organic methods.