Data from: Taxonomic and functional diversity in Mediterranean pastures: Insights on the biodiversity-productivity trade-off

Agricultural intensification is one of the main causes of biodiversity
loss world-wide. The inclusion of semi-natural features in agricultural
landscapes is suggested as a means of enhancing farm biodiversity, but
this practice may have potential negative effects on yield production.
Moreover, little evidence exists for effects of semi-natural features on
other components of biodiversity, such as functional diversity. Yet this
could provide a more comprehensive understanding of
biodiversity–productivity trade-offs. Here, we report the effects of
semi-natural woody vegetation on taxonomic and functional diversity, and
biomass production of herbaceous species at the field and farm scales by
sampling 50 fields, ranging from 0 to 90% woody vegetation cover, on nine
similarly managed farms in central-western Spain. We found significant
differences in herbaceous species richness among farms. Both taxonomic and
functional β-diversity exhibited significant negative relationships with
herbage production, highlighting the trade-off between biodiversity and
productivity in these agroecosystems. Woody vegetation cover had a
significant negative relationship with biomass production and a unimodal
relationship with species richness at the field scale. At high values of
woody vegetation cover, species richness and functional diversity indices
were decoupled, suggesting that at this extreme of the woody vegetation
gradient, only herbaceous species with contrasting trait values were
present. Our results showed both convergent and divergent patterns of
trait values, suggesting that different assembly processes are acting
concurrently along the gradient of woody vegetation. Synthesis and
applications. Our result indicates that management of woody vegetation may
indeed increase both taxonomic and functional diversity, but this may come
at the expense of key ecosystem services or other management goals, namely
herbage production. Optimization of the trade-off between herbage
diversity and productivity can be reached with a woody vegetation cover of
c. 30% at the field scale.