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Oil palm plantation expansion is occurring at a rapid pace. However, substantial yield losses from pest attacks are becoming major threats to the oil palm industry, while the potential role of conservation biological control, a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution for pest control, is still largely unknown. The type of vegetation surrounding oil palm plantations is likely to influence
Tropical biodiversity is threatened by the expansion of oil-palm plantations. Reduced-impact farming systems such as agroforests, have been proposed to increase biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In regions where oil-palm plantations already dominate the landscape, this increase can only be achieved through systematic ecological restoration. However, our knowledge about the underlying ecologi
Important intermediate ecosystem services (ES) such as crop pollination and biological control of pests, which underpin the final ES agricultural yields, are mediated by mobile organisms that depend on availability of habitat and its arrangement in the landscape. It has been suggested that landscape-scale management (LSM) of habitat in a multi-farm setting results in higher provisioning of such ES
Plant size has been hypothesized to be a major driver of biotic interactions. However, it is little understood how plant size affects plant mutualists vs. antagonists and the plant's resulting reproductive success. We established a common garden experiment covering an interspecific plant size gradient (from 10 to 130 cm height) across 21 annual Brassicaceae species, thereby standardizing features
Oil palm expansion results in a loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. However, there are factors that influence the severity of these impacts and enhancing biodiversity within plantations is important. In the present study, we examined the role of epiphytes for supporting arthropod communities in oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. We considered the effects of landscape c
Aim The impact of multiple stressors on biodiversity is one of the most pressing questions in ecology and biodiversity conservation. Here we critically assess how often and efficiently two main drivers of global change have been simultaneously integrated into research, with the aim of providing practical solutions for better integration in the future. We focus on the integration of climate change
Forest degradation, forest fires, and wildlife poaching have devastated biodiversity in Indonesia. To assess the impact of forest degradation and the potential for recovery, we used birds as a proxy for biodiversity and assessed density estimates (hereafter density) in the degraded lowland forest of Harapan Rainforest Ecosystem Restoration Concession (HRF) in Sumatra. In this study, a total of 149
We argue that the current system of agri-environment management in the European Common Agricultural Policy is ineffective at conserving biodiversity in part because it promotes fragmentation instead of collaboration of actors, thus hindering coordinated biodiversity management. Actor fragmentation is reinforced by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in three ways: (1) through targeting individual
Amazonia is an environmentally heterogeneous and biologically megadiverse region, and its biodiversity varies considerably over space. However, existing knowledge on Amazonian biodiversity and its environmental determinants stems almost exclusively from studies of macroscopic above-ground organisms, notably vertebrates and trees. In contrast, diversity patterns of most other organisms remain elusi
Intensive agricultural management negatively affects both natural enemies of pests and pollinators. Such management also has the potential to adversely affect the ecosystem services that these communities confer. Organic management has been proposed as an alternative method to mitigate such problems by restoring the services provided by arthropod communities. We evaluated the effect of organic
The EU's farmers are no longer required to produce commodities to receive direct payments as long as they keep their land in good condition. Some believe this is bad for development because it encourages passive farming. We evaluate, using a real options approach, the implications of decoupled payments for the desirability and optimal timing of agricultural land development when considering sunk i
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided periodic assessments of the state of knowledge on climate change for 30 years. While these assessments have been central to the making of international climate policy, their relevance has been questioned in the post-Paris era. Can the IPCC's global kinds of knowledge match the demands of an increasingly decentralized and polycentric
Background. Knowledge on the globally outstanding Amazonian biodiversity and its environmental determinants stems almost exclusively from aboveground organisms, notably plants. In contrast, the environmental factors and habitat preferences that drive diversity patterns for micro-organisms in the ground remain elusive, despite the fact that micro-organisms constitute the overwhelming majority of li
Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-c
Bumblebees are important pollinators for a wide range of crops and wild plants. Performance of their colonies depends on pollen and nectar as food resources, but flowering plants are scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. It is well-known that semi-natural habitats can enhance floral resources and bumblebee abundance, but the impact of different crop types and their heterogeneity at the landsca
The 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introduced compulsory ‘greening’ measures with the goal to mitigate environmental degradation caused by intensive agriculture. This paper aims to investigate how the implementation of the Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) obligation will affect regional agricultural development, the economic performance of farms and land use (including choices of
Patterns of animal migration and the ecological forces that shape them have been studied for centuries. Yet ecological impacts caused by the migration, such as altered predator–prey interactions and effects on community structure, remain poorly understood. This is to a large extent due to the scarcity of naturally replicated migration systems with negative controls, that is, ecosystems without mig
Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through
Browning of surface waters, as a result of increasing dissolved organic carbon and iron concentrations, is a widespread phenomenon with implications to the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. In this article, we provide an overview of the consequences of browning in relation to ecosystem services, outline what the underlying drivers and mechanisms of browning are, and specifically focus
