Management under ecological schemes and increasing habitat heterogeneity, are essential for enhancing biodiversity in vineyards. Birds provide several contributions to agriculture, for example pest control, recreation and enhancing human mental health, and have intrinsic value. Birds are also ideal model organisms because they are easy to survey, and species respond differently to agricultural land use at different scales. Vegetated borders of crops are key for many species of birds, and distance to the border have been found to be an important factor in vineyard-dominated agroecosystems. We evaluate if there are differences in the bird assemblage, between the interior compared to borders within vineyards, using a hierarchical community occupancy model. We hypothesized that occupancy of birds is greater in environments with greater heterogeneity, which in this study was considered to be contributed by the proximity to vegetated corridors. We expected that vineyard borders close to corridors will have higher bird occupancy than the center of the vineyard. The research was conducted in three vineyards with biodiversity-friendly management practices, in Gualtallary, Mendoza, Argentina. Bird surveys were conducted over three breeding seasons from 2018 to 2020. Occupancy and richness of the bird community was more closely associated with the borders adjacent to the corridors than with the interior of the vineyards, as we initially predicted, although the assemblage of birds did not differ much. More than 75% of the registered species consume exclusively or partially invertebrates. Biodiversity-friendly management and ecological schemes, together with vegetated corridors provide multiple benefits for biodiversity conservation. These approaches not only minimize the use of agrochemicals but also prioritize soil cover with spontaneous vegetation, which supports a diverse community of insectivorous bird species, potentially contributing to pest control.
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Open Access
Research Article
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Open Access
Research
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Reconciling agriculture and biodiversity conservation is a challenge given the growing demand for agricultural products. In recent decades, Argentina has witnessed agricultural expansion and intensification affecting biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Within agroecosystems, the level of habitat quality is critical for birds, and may depend on vegetation structure, availability of invertebrate prey, and the use of pesticides. Although the relationship between vegetation structure and avian occurrence has been widely studied, to our knowledge, there are no studies that also incorporate prey availability throughout the cycle of soybean crops in Argentina. We estimated and predicted the effects of land cover and temporal variation on the occurrence of avian foraging guilds in Entre Ríos, Argentina, in order to guide management related to potential ecosystem services provided by birds. We also estimated temporal effects of vegetation structure and insecticides on the main arthropod orders consumed by birds to evaluate prey availability.
We conducted bird and arthropod surveys for 2 years along transects located in 20 randomly selected soybean fields (N=60) and their adjacent borders (N=78) throughout the crop growing season, in four seasons. We estimated avian occupancy, accounting for imperfect detection, and arthropod counts fitting generalized linear mixed models.
The number of native trees in field borders positively influenced the occurrence of most bird species, mainly insectivores. Granivore foliage gleaners, also were positively affected by grass height. Salliers and aerial foragers were weakly affected by distance to forest and native trees. In general, the availability of invertebrates to birds was highest during the third season. Arthropod counts in borders were greater during the last three crop stages than during the pre-sowing period.
We found that with 10 to 15 native tree species in borders, coupled with a complex vegetation structure with shrubs and grasses, we could conserve a wide spectrum of insectivorous birds, and may contribute to the invertebrate pest control service. Vegetated field borders function as a refuge for arthropods, especially agriculturally beneficial taxa such as Hymenopterans. Finally, several groups of birds use the interior of the fields and could help control pests.
