RT Journal Article
T1 Effects of livestock on arthropod biodiversity in Iberian holm oak savannas revealed by metabarcoding
A1 Canelo, Tara
A1 Marquina, Daniel
A1 Chozas, Sergio
A1 Bergsten, Johannes
A1 Gaytán, Álvaro
A1 Pérez Izquierdo, Carlos
A1 Bonal Andrés, Raúl
AB ncreasing food production while avoiding negative impacts on biodiversity constitutes one of the main challenges of our time. Traditional silvopastoral systems like Iberian oak savannas (“dehesas”) set an example, where free-range livestock has been reared for centuries while preserving a high natural value. Nevertheless, factors decreasing productivity need to be addressed, one being acorn losses provoked by pest insects. An increased and focalized grazing by livestock on infested acorns would kill the larvae inside and decrease pest numbers, but increased livestock densities could have undesired side effects on ground arthropod communities as a whole. We designed an experimental setup including areas under trees with livestock exclosures of different ages (short-term: 1-year exclusion, long-term: 10-year exclusion), along with controls (continuous grazing), using DNA metabarcoding (mitochondrial markers COI and 16S) to rapidly assess arthropod communities’ composition. Livestock removal quickly increased grass cover and arthropod taxonomic richness and diversity, which was already higher in short-term (1-year exclosures) than beneath the canopies of control trees. Interestingly, arthropod diversity was not highest at long-term exclosures (≥10 years), although their community composition was the most distinct. Also, regardless of treatment, we found that functional diversity strongly correlated with the vegetation structure, being higher at trees beneath which there was higher grass cover and taller herbs. Overall, the taxonomic diversity peak at short term exclosures would support the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which relates it with the higher microhabitat heterogeneity at moderately disturbed areas. Thus, we propose a rotatory livestock management in dehesas: plots with increased grazing should co-exist with temporal short-term exclosures. Ideally, a few long-term excluded areas should be also kept for the singularity of their arthropod communities. This strategy would make possible the combination of biological pest control and arthropod conservation in Iberian dehesas.
PB Elsevier
SN 0301-4797
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/118130
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/118130
LA eng
NO Canelo, T., Marquina, D., Chozas, S., Bergsten, J., Gaytán, Á., Pérez-Izquierdo, C., & Bonal, R. (2024). Effects of livestock on arthropod biodiversity in Iberian holm oak savannas revealed by metabarcoding. Journal of Environmental Management, 365, 121619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121619
NO TC was supported by a Margarita Salas postdoctoral fellowship (Ayuda del Programa de Recualificación del Sistema Universitario Español – Ministerio de Universidades - NextGeneration EU, MS-20). DM was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 642241 (BIG4 project, https://big4-project.eu). This research was funded by the project AGL2014-54739-R from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Social Fund (Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation).
NO Ministerio de Universidades (España)
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España)
NO European Commission
DS Docta Complutense
RD 5 abr 2025