Pest control by natural enemies (natural pest control) is an important regulating ecosystem service with significant implications for the sustainability of agro-ecosystems. The presence of semi-natural habitats and landscape heterogeneity are key determinants of the delivery of this service. However, to date, synthetic and consistent indicators at large scales are lacking. We developed a pan-European, spatially-explicit model to map and assess the landscape potential to sustain natural pest control. The model considers landscape composition in terms of semi-natural habitats types, abundance, spatial configuration and distance from the focal field. It combines recent high-resolution geospatial layers with empirical results from extensive field surveys measuring the specific contribution of different semi-natural habitats to support insects flying enemies providing natural pest control. The resulting maps facilitate a comparison of the relative biological control potential of different areas and show that currently a large proportion of high-productive agricultural areas in Europe has low potential. The obtained indicator can inform the formulation of policies and planning strategies aimed at increasing biodiversity and ecosystem services and can be used to assess trade-offs between different services. Potential fields of application include the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Biodiversity Strategy, in particular the implementation of Green Infrastructure.
Pest control by natural enemies (natural pest control) is an important regulating ecosystem service with significant implications for the sustainability of agro-ecosystems. The presence of semi-natural habitats and landscape heterogeneity are key determinants of the delivery of this service. However, to date, synthetic and consistent indicators at large scales are lacking. We developed a pan-European, spatially-explicit model to map and assess the landscape potential to sustain natural pest control. The model considers landscape composition in terms of semi-natural habitats types, abundance, spatial configuration and distance from the focal field. It combines recent high-resolution geospatial layers with empirical results from extensive field surveys measuring the specific contribution of different semi-natural habitats to support insects flying enemies providing natural pest control. The resulting maps facilitate a comparison of the relative biological control potential of different areas and show that currently a large proportion of high-productive agricultural areas in Europe has low potential. The obtained indicator can inform the formulation of policies and planning strategies aimed at increasing biodiversity and ecosystem services and can be used to assess trade-offs between different services. Potential fields of application include the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Biodiversity Strategy, in particular the implementation of Green Infrastructure.
In: Cole , LJ , Kleijn , D , Dicks , L , Stout , J , Potts , S , Albrecht , M , Balzan , M , Bartomeus , I , Bebeli , P , Bevk , D , Biesmeijer , J , Chlebo , R , Dautartė , A , Emmanouil , N , Hartfield , C , Holland , J , Holzschuh , A , Knoben , N , Kovács-Hostyánszki , A , Mandelik , Y , Panou , H , Paxton , R , Petanidou , T , Pinheiro de Carvalho , M , Rundlöf , M , Sarthou , J-P , Stavrinides , M , Suso , M , Szentgyörgyi , H , Vaissière , B , Varnava , A , Zemeckis , R & Scheper , J 2020 , ' A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland ' , Journal of Applied Ecology , vol. 57 , no. 4 , pp. 681-694 . https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13572
Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake. A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources. EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived. Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.
Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, we investigated whether flower visitation and seed set of insect-pollinated plants decline with an increasing proportion of arable land within 1 km. Key results – Seed set increased with increasing flower visitation by bees, most of which were wild bees, but not with increasing flower visitation by other insects. Increasing proportion of arable land had a strongly variable effect on seed set and flower visitation by bees across studies. Conclusion – Factors such as landscape configuration, local habitat quality, and temporally changing resource availability (e.g. due to mass-flowering crops or honey bee hives) could have modified the effect of arable land on pollination. While our results highlight that the persistence of wild bees is crucial to maintain plant diversity, we also show that pollen limitation due to declining bee populations in homogenized agricultural landscapes is not a universal driver causing parallel losses of bees and insect-pollinated plants. ; EU FP5 QLRT-2001-01495 ; Swiss Federal Office for Science and Technology (01·0524-2) ; FORMAS ; Estonian Ministry of Education and Research IUT (IUT20-33) ; Internal Grant Agency of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague 42900/1312/3166 ; MC-CIG BeeFun project: PCIG14-GA-2013-631653 ; DAFM ; IRC ; Formas (2018-01466) ; German Ministry of Research and Education (FKZ: 01LC1104A) ; NKFIH project (FK123813) ; NKFIH (KKP 133839) ; European Union in the 7th Framework Programme (grant 244090), ; MTA Bolyai Fellow ; Peer reviewed
Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake.A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources.EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived.Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert ...