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

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 studies, focusing on the effect of SPS relative to forests on plants (n=6 contributions, referred to as effect sizes in the meta-analysis). One contribution reported a negative effect of SPS on plant biodiversity, and another showed no effect. In 4 out of the 6 contributions, there was no corresponding comparative statistical analysis, indicated by “NA” in the “outcome” row. Therefore, it is not possible to compare the vote count outcome with the meta-analysis, which revealed no significant difference between SPS and forests for this taxon.