Testing the effectiveness of surrogates for assessing biological diversity of arthropods in cereal agricultural landscapes

• Published in: Ecological indicators 2016-08, Vol.67, p.297-305
• Main Authors: Pérez-Fuertes, Octavio, García-Tejero, Sergio, Pérez Hidalgo, Nicolás, Mateo-Tomás, Patricia, Cuesta-Segura, Amonio David, P. Olea, Pedro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aphididae; Aphidiinae; Arthropod biodiversity; Arthropoda; arthropods; Cereal pseudo-steppes; Coccinellidae; cost effectiveness; cropland; Formicidae; Hemiptera; Heteroptera; intensive farming; irrigation; Mediterranean landscape; species diversity; Species richness; Surrogate taxa; Syrphidae; Triticum aestivum; Wheat
• ISSN: 1470-160X; 1872-7034
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.02.041

•We tested higher-taxon and cross-taxon surrogacy in a Mediterranean farming region.•Genus level data were the best surrogates for both species richness and composition.•Aphididae and Aphidiinae richness were good cross-taxon surrogates of each other.•Aphididae and Coccinellidae richness were good surrogates of total species richness.•Farming regime (Dry-Irrigated) rarely influenced surrogate performance. Agricultural intensification is altering biodiversity patterns worldwide. Rapid and effective methods are needed to monitor these changes in farmland biodiversity, but it becomes both a cost- and time-prohibitive task, particularly for hyper-diverse groups such as arthropods. We evaluated the effectiveness of surrogates in irrigated and rainfed wheat fields in a Mediterranean farmland in NW Spain in order to get a rapid tool to assess arthropod biodiversity. We studied six groups with different ecological needs (i.e. Aphididae, Aphidiinae, Coccinellidae, Formicidae, Heteroptera and Syrphidae) at species level (147 species), genus (105), family (10, only Heteroptera) and order (19) level. Higher taxa, cross-taxa and subset-taxa or total richness approaches were tested as well as the correlation in composition between levels for the selected groups, and the influence of farming regime. Genus richness was a good surrogate of species richness in all six groups studied (R2=0.38–0.60), like family and order were for Heteroptera (R2=0.37 and 0.29, respectively). Cross-taxa analyses showed that Aphididae and Aphidiinae genera (R2=0.19 and 0.30, respectively) and species (R2=0.20 and 0.28, respectively) were good surrogates for Aphidiinae and Aphididae species respectively. Coccinellidae genera (R2=0.26) and species (R2=0.25) were good surrogates for Heteroptera species. Finally, Aphididae and Coccinellidae both at genera (R2=0.14 and 0.20, respectively) and at species levels (R2=0.12–0.22, respectively) were good surrogates for total species richness of all groups. Genera composition was the best surrogate for the species composition within each group. Farming regime had no influence on the relationships between surrogates and species patterns in most cases. Our results suggest that genera level is a useful surrogate for all the studied groups and family is appropriate for Heteroptera. Genus level provided a saving of 15% of identification time in Aphididae and 80% for Coccinellidae. This proves its usefulness to asses and monitor biodiversity in wheat croplands