The landscape complexity relevance to farming effect assessment on small mammal occupancy in Argentinian farmlands

SERAFINI VANESA; CODA JOSÉ; CONTRERAS FACUNDO; CONROY MICHAEL; GOMEZ M DANIELA; PRIOTTO JOSÉ

OECOLOGIA

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2019

0029-8549

The responses of organisms to organic farming depend on the taxonomic group and landscape complexity. Following the intermediate landscape complexity hypothesis, organic farming can compensate for the lack of complexity in simple landscapes. Argentinian farmlands are simple with large fields and scarce linear habitat array, and conventional agriculture is almost the only agriculture farming. We hypothesize that landscape complexity in interaction with farming practices has an effect on occupancy and species richness of small mammals in farmland of central Argentina. We selected circular landscapes under organic farming and low and high intensity conventional farming and quantified heterogeneity in each landscape considering different cover types (crops, resting plots, fallow land, border habitats, grasslands and man-made structures). We used multi-species occupancy models accounting for multiple seasons with a Bayesian approach to make the estimates. Organic farms had the highest level of landscape heterogeneity compared to farms of both conventional farming practices. In simple Argentinian farmlands, organic farming benefited species richness and occupancy of all small mammal species. Landscape complexity of conventional farming never reached the level of organic one. Some management strategies used in organic farming (wide and vegetated border habitats, diversity in types of production, winter cover crops, natural or semi-natural patches) should be taken into account to increase landscape complexity in conventional farming.