Replacing low-intensity cattle pasture with oil palm conserves dung beetle functional diversity when paired with forest protection.

Meeting rising demand for oil palm whilst minimizing the loss of tropical biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions is a core conservation challenge. One potential solution is focusing the expansion of high-yielding crops on presently low-yielding farmlands alongside protecting nearby tropical forests that can enhance provision of ecosystem functions. A key question is how this solution would impact invertebrate functional diversity. We focus on oil palm in the Colombian Llanos, where plantations are replacing improved cattle pastures and forest fragments, and on dung beetles, which play key functional roles in nutrient cycling and secondary seed dispersal. We show that functional richness and functional diversity of dung beetles is greater in oil palm than in cattle pasture, and that functional metrics did not differ between oil palm and remnant forest. The abundance-size class profile of dung beetles in oil palm was more similar to forest than to pasture, which had lower abundances of the smallest and largest dung beetles. The abundance of tunneling and rolling dung beetles did not differ between oil palm and forest, while higher forest cover increased the abundance of diurnal and generalist-feeding beetles in oil palm landscapes. This suggests that prioritizing agricultural development on low-yielding cattle pasture will have positive effects on functional diversity and highlights the need for forest protection to maintain ecosystem functioning within agricultural landscapes.

Davies RW ，Edwards DP ，Medina-Uribe CA ，Cárdenas-Bautista JS ，Haugaasen T ，Gilroy JJ ，Edwards FA ... -  《-》

Minimizing the biodiversity impact of Neotropical oil palm development.

Oil palm agriculture is rapidly expanding in the Neotropics, at the expense of a range of natural and seminatural habitats. A key question is how this expansion should be managed to reduce negative impacts on biodiversity. Focusing on the Llanos of Colombia, a mixed grassland-forest system identified as a priority zone for future oil palm development, we survey communities of ants, dung beetles, birds and herpetofauna occurring in oil palm plantations and the other principal form of agriculture in the region--improved cattle pasture--together with those of surrounding natural forests. We show that oil palm plantations have similar or higher species richness across all four taxonomic groups than improved pasture. For dung beetles, species richness in oil palm was equal to that of forest, whereas the other three taxa had highest species richness in forests. Hierarchical modelling of species occupancy probabilities indicated that oil palm plantations supported a higher proportion of species characteristic of forests than did cattle pastures. Across the bird community, occupancy probabilities within oil palm were positively influenced by increasing forest cover in a surrounding 250 m radius, whereas surrounding forest cover did not strongly influence the occurrence of other taxonomic groups in oil palm. Overall, our results suggest that the conversion of existing improved pastures to oil palm has limited negative impacts on biodiversity. As such, existing cattle pastures of the Colombian Llanos could offer a key opportunity to meet governmental targets for oil palm development without incurring significant biodiversity costs. Our results also highlight the value of preserving remnant forests within these agricultural landscapes, protecting high biodiversity and exporting avian 'spill-over' effects into oil palm plantations.

Gilroy JJ ，Prescott GW ，Cardenas JS ，Castañeda PG ，Sánchez A ，Rojas-Murcia LE ，Medina Uribe CA ，Haugaasen T ，Edwards DP ... -  《-》

Do riparian reserves support dung beetle biodiversity and ecosystem services in oil palm-dominated tropical landscapes?

Gray CL ，Slade EM ，Mann DJ ，Lewis OT ... -  《Ecology and Evolution》

Dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) in three landscapes in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

Rodrigues MM ，Uchôa MA ，Ide S 《-》

Sparing land for secondary forest regeneration protects more tropical biodiversity than land sharing in cattle farming landscapes.

Effectively managing farming to meet food demand is vital for the future of biodiversity.1,2 Increasing yields on existing farmland can allow the abandonment (sparing) of low-yielding areas that subsequently recover as secondary forest.2-5 A key question is whether such "secondary sparing" conserves biodiversity more effectively than retaining wildlife-friendly habitat within farmland ("land sharing"). Focusing on the Colombian Choco-Andes, a global hotspot of threatened biodiversity,6 and on cattle farming, we examined the outcomes of secondary sparing and land sharing via simulated scenarios that maintained constant landscape-wide production and equal within-pasture yield: (1) for species and functional diversity of dung beetles and birds; (2) for avian phylogenetic diversity; and (3) across different stages of secondary forest regeneration, relative to spared primary forests. Sparing older secondary forests (15-30 years recovery) promotes substantial species, functional, and phylogenetic (birds only) diversity benefits for birds and dung beetles compared to land sharing. Species of conservation concern had higher occupancy estimates under land-sparing compared to land-sharing scenarios. Spared secondary forests accumulated equivalent diversity to primary forests for dung beetles within 15 years and within 15-30 years for birds, highlighting the need for longer term protection to maximize the biodiversity gains of secondary sparing. Promoting the recovery and protection of large expanses of secondary forests under the land-sparing model provides a critical mechanism for protecting tropical biodiversity, with important implications for concurrently assisting in the delivery of global targets to restore 350 million hectares of forested landscapes.7,8.

Edwards FA ，Massam MR ，Cosset CCP ，Cannon PG ，Haugaasen T ，Gilroy JJ ，Edwards DP ... -  《-》