Abstract
The cultivation of the olive tree (Olea europaea L.) has great importance in the entire Mediterranean basin, so that the implementation of organic practices in their management directly affects the sustainability of the agricultural system. Bioindication with arthropods can help to detect the different agricultural practices. In this work, we analyse the most appropriate methodology for discriminating between management using arthropods at the taxonomic level of order, with the novelty of taking into account the weather conditions to select the sampling dates. Between 12 and 15 sampling stations (depending on the year) were selected from olive orchards belonging to organic, conventional non-tillage, and strict conventional management, being sampled by beating the canopy fortnightly in the spring-summer period of 2007, 2008 and 2009. Organic management was more abundant and richer than the rest for the three years. Most groups with significant differences in terms of relative abundance were more abundant in organic orchard, except Neuroptera. Finally, different discriminant methods were evaluated (Linear Discriminant Analysis, Multiple Discriminant Analysis, and Support Vector Machine) with several different data sets. The discriminant analysis with interannual variability reached 97.9% accuracy in differentiating between organic and non-organic management using the LDA method, considering the taxa with significant differences from the abundance, excluding pests, and using samples with more uniform and stable weather patterns (late summer).
Highlights
The general increase in the European agricultural landscape homogeneity during the second half of the 20th century has had a profoundly negative impact on biodiversity (Robinson & Sutherland, 2002; Benton et al, 2003)
We propose the use of olive-orchard-canopy arthropod fauna at the taxonomic level of order to discriminate between different management types, including interannual variability and certain meteorological considerations about sampling dates, to answer the following questions: a) Can the study of the high taxonomic levels canopy arthropod fauna of olive orchards discriminate the different orchard-management types? It is assumed that the use of high levels taxonomic arthropod fauna may be a useful tool for discriminating between management types, especially organic and non-organic
For each management type, the mean number of individuals per sampling station (X ) and standard deviation (SD) were calculated, differentiating samples taken on different dates by leaving at least 15 days between samplings in all cases
Summary
The general increase in the European agricultural landscape homogeneity during the second half of the 20th century has had a profoundly negative impact on biodiversity (Robinson & Sutherland, 2002; Benton et al, 2003). The natural and semi-natural vegetation in this region continues to be eliminated to increase the area for olive-orchard cultivation, and the original landscape has been reduced and fragmented (Parra & Calatrava, 2006; Milgroom et al, 2007). This trend has impoverished the arthropod fauna in the olive-orchard agroecosystem (Guzmán & Alonso, 2004b; Ruano et al, 2004; Santos et al, 2007a; Scalercio et al, 2012; Paredes et al, 2013). Conservation of olive production is a necessity for the fragile Mediterranean ecosystems and a challenge to all sectors involved (Loumou & Giourga, 2003)
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