Farming practices in the landscape have an impact on grassland arthropods, in addition to local conditions and land cover

Abstract

Arthropods deliver vital ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes, but their diversity is threatened by intensified farming and landscape simplification. Despite this, the relative impacts of farming practices at the landscape level remain underexplored compared to local and land cover effects. In this study, we dissect the influence of local and landscape factors, including farming practices, on arthropod communities. By sampling 18 grasslands in northeastern France during spring and autumn 2021, we collected 14 arthropod families, identifying all species of carabids and spiders. We conducted surveys of farming practices to estimate their intensity at landscape level. Our results highlight that environmental factors affect arthropod communities differently between seasons. Intensity of farming practices at landscape level was less explanatory of arthropod communities, but this impact is additional to that of local conditions and land cover. Our study underscores the critical need to integrate farming practices into landscape-level management strategies to safeguard arthropod diversity.