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Biological control, an essential ecosystem service to agriculture, can be affected by ecological processes operating at landscape scales. Here we assessed the effect of landscape complexity, measured as proportion of arable land (PAL), on the abundance of aphids, parasitoids, and specialist and generalist predators. In addition we set up cage experiments to test the ability of these groups of enem
Pollinator declines have raised concerns about the persistence of plant species that depend on insect pollination, in particular by bees, for their reproduction. The impact of pollinator declines remains unknown for species-rich plant communities found in temperate seminatural grasslands. We investigated effects of land-use intensity in the surrounding landscape on the distribution of plant traits
Protecting semi-natural grasslands may through spill-over benefit species richness and abundance of flower-visiting insects in linear habitats, such as uncultivated field boundaries, in agricultural landscapes. However, whether local diversity increases both with decreasing distance from potential source habitats and increasing landscape heterogeneity is poorly known due to a general lack of studi
Aims: Climate change is known to drive both the reshuffling of whole assemblages and range shifts of individual species. Less is known about how local colonizations and extinctions of individual species contribute to changes at the community level. Our aim was to estimate the contribution of individual species to a change in community composition attributed to climate change and to relate these sp
Lake restoration practices based on reducing fish predation and promoting the dominance of large-bodied Daphnia grazers (i.e., biomanipulation) have been the focus of much debate due to inconsistent success in suppressing harmful cyanobacterial blooms. While most studies have explored effects of large-bodied Daphnia on cyanobacterial growth at the community level and/or on few dominant species, pr
Uncultivated field boundaries constitute a significant part of the remaining semi-natural habitat in simplified agricultural landscapes, providing habitats for many grassland species. In Europe, agri-environment schemes (AES) offer incentives to farmers to manage farmland more environmentally friendly. In Sweden, one AES has specifically targeted management of incidental habitats on farmland by pr
Although the importance of New Institutional Economics and the institutional approach for understanding pre-industrial economic development and the early growth of markets are widely accepted, it has proven to be difficult to assess more directly the effects of institutions on the functioning of markets. This paper uses empirical research on the rise of markets in late medieval Holland to illumina
Making decisions between alternatives are challenging when there is weak or unreliable knowledge about the risks and benefits of the alternatives. This requires a trade-off between risks (and benefits). Here, we comment on a recent paper on risk–risk trade-offs and highlight the difficulties of making such trade-offs when the available evidence is of different strength. One current example of a ri
Mass-flowering crops (MFCs) are increasingly cultivated and might influence pollinator communities in MFC fields and nearby semi-natural habitats (SNHs). Across six European regions and 2 years, we assessed how landscape-scale cover of MFCs affected pollinator densities in 408 MFC fields and adjacent SNHs. In MFC fields, densities of bumblebees, solitary bees, managed honeybees and hoverflies were
Plant-feeding insects reduce yields substantially in all major crops despite considerable crop protection efforts. A lack of long-term monitoring data and insufficient ecological knowledge of pest insects limit our possibilities to characterize drivers of change in their abundances. We demonstrate how a suite of complementary methods and data sources can be used to analyse historical shifts in pes
Honeybees might outcompete wild bees by depleting common resources, possibly more so in simplified landscapes where flower-rich habitats have been lost. We tested this by experimentally adding honeybee hives to nine sites while ensuring that ten additional sites were free from hives. The landscape surrounding each geographically separated site either held low (homogeneous landscape) or high (heter
Hunting in tropical forests decimates large mammals, and this may have direct and indirect effects on other trophic levels and lead to trophic cascades. We compared replicated sites of hunted and protected forests in southeastern Nigeria, with respect to community composition of primates, other mammals, birds, plant seedlings, and mature trees. We make predictions regarding the community compositi
We outline a conceptual strategy for implementing conservation interventionsin a multiscale, multiactor, and multilevel governance world. Using farmlandas an example, we argue that conservation interventions should be implementedwithin a multiscale framework of guiding ecological principles. Inthis context, findings from multilevel governance research can inform a nuancedunderstanding of the role
Increasing cultivation of oilseed rape may have consequences for pollinators and wild plant pollination. By providing pollinating insects with pollen and nectar, oilseed rape benefits short-tongued, generalist insect species. Long-tongued bumble bee species, specialized to other flower types, may instead be negatively affected by increased competition from the generalists (e.g. due to nectar-robbi
Over and above food, agricultural landscapes provide citizens with crucial public-good ecosystem services, such as biodiversity conservation, cultural values, recreational opportunities, and food security. Because continuing agricultural intensification undermines the ability of landscapes to provide public goods, policies have been implemented to preserve landscape multifunctionality, but with li
The tremendous increases in production of plastic materials has led to an accumulation of plastic pollution worldwide. Many studies have addressed the physical effects of large-sized plastics on organisms, whereas few have focused on plastic nanoparticles, despite their distinct chemical, physical and mechanical properties. Hence our understanding of their effects on ecosystem function, behaviour
Ecological intensification of agriculture implies managing ecological processes to improve performance of agricultural systems. However, impacts on relevant ecological functions such as insect pollination from other crop management factors are poorly explored. Pest insects and crop resources such as water availability can directly affect crop yields, but it is unknown if there are indirect effects
We propose a model to consider data dependencies and assess spatial and temporal variability in land use specific floral coverage across landscapes. Data dependence arising from repeated measurements across the flowering season is taken into account using hierarchical Archimedean copulas, where the correlation is assumed to be stronger within seasonal periods than between periods. For each seasona
Strawberry and oilseed rape are economically important and co-flowering insect-pollinated crops that may affect each other via shared pollinators. One potential negative effect of pollinator sharing is stigma clogging, i.e. that pollen from one plant species covers the stigma and prevents pollination in the other. We tested if application of oilseed rape pollen on strawberry receptacles reduces po
