Abstract
In Europe, anthropogenic habitats that are optimised for agriculture and forestry purposes have widely replaced natural habitats. To assess their value for biodiversity, we compared beetle communities among three anthropogenic land use types, namely spruce plantations, Christmas tree plantations and maize fields. These three land use types are all characterised by high phytobiomass and vertical plant structure and represent a gradient of anthropogenic impact linked to fertilisation, pesticide use, frequent operation of machinery and rotation period length. We found that all components of beetle diversity, i.e. abundance, number of species and Simpson diversity as well as the number of threatened beetle species decreased with increasing anthropogenic impact from spruce plantations to Christmas tree plantations to maize fields. However, beetle biomass was relatively high in maize fields, due to the abundant species in this land use type having a high body mass. Community composition changed with anthropogenic impact. Beetle communities in maize fields were characterised by a higher frequency of zoophagous beetles and a lower frequency of saprophagous/mycetophagous and xylophagous beetles than those in Christmas tree plantations and spruce plantations. The low value of maize fields for beetle biodiversity is concerning because the area covered by maize increased over the last decade by 26.7% and now constitutes 13.5% of arable land globally.
Published Version
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