Research has shown that grassland harvesting techniques do have an impact upon arthropod populations (Humbert et al. ( 2019) the impact of technological development of agricultural machinery may present an important additional threat to biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. 2016), and a comparison of whole farming systems (Birkhofer et al. ![]() 2015), simplified crop rotations (González-Varo et al. 2006), the prevalence of monocultures and landscape homogeneity (Batáry et al. 2009), the establishment of large scale farms (Herzog et al. Consequently, previous research addressing the decline of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes has focused on the increasing use of pesticides (Geiger et al. Agricultural intensification is broadly defined as the industrialisation of agricultural practices with the aim of improving yield productivity, by increasing agricultural inputs and the rationalisation of farm and land use structures (Kleijn et al. 2016) and other parts of the world (Landis 2017). As the damage due to the use of conditioners is presumably higher in extensively managed grasslands, and the profit of their use is higher in intensively managed grasslands, we suggest, as an implication for insect conservation, concentrating measures to disincentivise the use of conditioners on extensively managed grassland.Īgricultural intensification is a major driver of the decline of biodiversity in Europe (Kleijn et al. Depending on the respective grassland area managed with conditioners in the future, grasslands could be losing an additional 4% to 18% of their overall arthropod numbers only due to the use of conditioners compared to a scenario without conditioners. We also found that the use of conditioners takes place on substantially more than 20% of all grasslands in the study region. ![]() ![]() Aphids and plant lice, beetles, thrips and mites were most severely affected by additional damage. The use of conditioners in the mowing process significantly increased the overall percentage of damaged individuals by 18% from 52% without to 70% with conditioner use. We have combined an ecological field study on the impact of conditioners on arthropods at the plot level with an analysis of the economic rationale of applying conditioners in differently managed grasslands in the study region, in order to understand the impact of applying conditioners on the damage to arthropods at the landscape level. This compression potentially increases the physical damage to several arthropod groups during the mowing process. Conditioners compress the freshly cut mowing material mechanically to destroy the evaporation-inhibiting wax layer of the grass material. This study addresses the use of conditioners as a driver of arthropod loss in agricultural landscapes.
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