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——当代最显著的环境变化形式之一——主要由陆地栖息地丧失驱动，其中尤以农业扩张与集约化程度加深为核心诱因。农业用地的持续扩张推动学界探寻高效的生物多样性保护策略：部分学者提出，通过降低农田本地管理强度（如削减化肥与农药施用量），可最大化实现农业领域的生物多样性保护目标；另有学者则强调景观尺度保护方案的重要性，即在农田周边景观中保留自然或半自然生境。本研究证实，上述两类策略均对生物多样性保护具有价值，而究竟本地管理因素还是景观格局因素对保护规划更为关键，则取决于目标保护的生物类群。我们对31项已发表研究中的266组观测数据开展了定量整合分析，这些研究对比了农田尺度（农场内部）的管理策略与农田周边景观复杂度对农业生态系统中植物、无脊椎动物与脊椎动物物种丰富度及个体丰度的影响。尽管两类因素均对物种丰富度存在显著影响，但固着型植物的丰富度随本地管理强度降低而提升，却未对景观复杂度产生显著响应；与之相对，移动型脊椎动物的丰富度随景观复杂度提升而增加，但未因本地管理强度降低而显著提升。无脊椎动物的丰富度与个体丰度则对两类因素均有响应。本研究分析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，并指出，若要保护多个分类学类群的生物，需采用多尺度的保护方案。