CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Field margins are key landscape features sustaining biodiversity, as well as ecosystem services. However, agricultural intensification has encouraged fencerow removal to enlarge cropping areas, reducing farmland biodiversity and its associated ecosystems services. In the present work, we assess the role of field margins in retaining farmland biodiversity across the sunflower cropping area of Argentina. Flower-visiting insects and entomophilous plants were intensively sampled along the margins of sunflower fields, in eight localities across eastern Argentina. We recorded 149 species of flowering plants, mostly natives, and 247 species of flower-visitors. Most of the floral visitors captured provide ecosystem services to agriculture. Our results indicate that semi-natural linear features support beneficial insects and native plants in intensively managed farmland of Argentina. Field margins may constitute the last refugia of native plant species and their associated fauna in farmland mosaics. Conservation of field margins in Argentine farmland may thus be essential for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services.