Effect of cattle silvopastoral systems relative to treeless pastures 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 documents, focusing on the effect of SPS relative to treeless pastures on plants (n=3 contributions, referred to as effect sizes in the meta-analysis). All three contributions reported no effect of SPS on plant biodiversity compared with treeless pastures. In contrast, the meta-analysis indicated that plant biodiversity was significantly higher in SPS than in treeless pastures.

Please note that the following document was included in the meta-analysis, but was not included in this ORKG comparison because it did not meet the platform’s requirements:

“The Swiss Mountain Wooded Pastures: Patterns and Processes” by Buttler et al. (2009)