Ecological intensification may reduce environmental externalities of agriculture by harnessing biodiversity to benefit regulating ecosystem services. However, to propose management options for the production of such services, there is a need to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of net effects between ecosystem services and disservices provided by wild organisms across taxonomic groups in relation to habitat and landscape management. We studied the contribution of predatory vertebrates and invertebrates (including both carnivores and seed herbivores) to regulating...

Communities are increasingly threatened by extreme weather events. The cumulative effects of such events are typically investigated by assessing community resilience, i.e., the extent to which affected communities can achieve pre-event states. However, a mechanistic understanding of the processes underlying resilience is frequently lacking and requires linking various measures of resilience to demographic responses within natural communities. Using 13 years of data from a shrub community that experienced a severe drought in 2005, we use...

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are...

Intraguild predation (IGP) is a common interaction between generalist predators when they competitively exploit similar resources and prey on each other. Theoretical models predict limitations for intraguild predator coexistence unless some mechanisms, such as utilization of alternative prey (i.e., trophic niche partitioning) and cannibalism, increase the relative intraspecific clustering and interspecific segregation. As hunting strategies determine trophic niches of predators and their own vulnerability to predation, the hunting strategies may also determine the relative importance...

Many studies have quantified the functional variation of fine root traits to understand the overarching trade-off between maximizing resource acquisition or conservation (root economics spectrum -RES-). However, we know remarkably less on how plant strategies along the RES are actually constrained by the amount of photosynthates required to construct roots (i.e. construction costs, CC) or how belowground interactions with symbiotic organisms modify root trait patterns and their relationships with CC. Our main aim was to...

1. In agricultural landscapes, arthropods provide essential ecosystem services such as biological pest control and pollination. Intensified crop management practices and homogenization of landscapes have led to declines among such organisms. Semi-natural habitats, associated with high numbers of these organisms, are increasingly lost from agricultural landscapes but diversification by increasing crop diversity has been proposed as a way to reverse observed arthropod declines and thus restore ecosystem services. However, whether or not an increase in...

The Evrona Nature Reserve (southern Israel; 29°40′N, 35°00′E) was affected by two large oil spills in 1975 and 2014, respectively. Between Nov 2019 to Oct 2019, we recorded invertebrate and vertebrate predation rates using the artificial caterpillar method (Howe et al. 2009, Entomol Exp App) in oil-polluted and unpolluted Vachellia trees.

1. Along with the global decline of species richness goes a loss of ecological traits. Associated biotic homogenization of animal communities and narrowing of trait diversity threaten ecosystem functioning and human well-being. High management intensity is regarded as an important ecological filter, eliminating species that lack suitable adaptations. Belowground arthropods are assumed to be less sensitive to such effects than aboveground arthropods. 2. Here, we compared the impact of management intensity between (grassland vs. forest)...

1. The “habitat heterogeneity hypothesis” predicts positive effects of structural complexity on species coexistence. Increasing habitat heterogeneity can change the diversity (number of species, abundances) and the functional roles of communities. The latter, however, is not well understood as species and individuals may respond very differently and dynamically to a changing environment. 2. Here, we experimentally test how habitat heterogeneity affects generalist arthropod predators, including epigaeic spiders, carabid and staphylinid beetles, under natural conditions by...

Spiders are dominant predators in terrestrial ecosystems and feed on prey from the herbivore and detritivore subsystem (dual subsystem omnivory) as well as on other predators (intraguild predation). Little is known about how global change potentially affects the importance of different prey groups in predator diets. In this meta-analysis we identify the impact of climatic conditions, land-use types and functional traits of spider species on the relative importance of Hemiptera, Araneae and Collembola prey in...

The human-caused proliferation of cyanobacteria severely impacts consumers in freshwater ecosystems. Toxicity is often singled out as the sole trait to which consumers can adapt, even though cyanobacteria are not necessarily toxic and the lack of nutritionally critical sterols in cyanobacteria is known to impair consumers. We studied the relative significance of toxicity and dietary sterol deficiency in driving the evolution of grazer resistance to cyanobacteria in a large lake with a well-documented history of...