Potential of Short Rotation Coppice plantations to reinforce functional biodiversity in agricultural landscapes

We compared communities of vascular plants and arthropods in ten Short Rotation Coppice (SRC)-maize pairs, to (1) quantify the difference in diversity and composition between these two alternative land-use types and (2) to assess the potential of SRC plantations to increase functional biodiversity values in agricultural landscapes. In each SRC plantation and maize field, the vegetation was surveyed and arthropods were sampled by applying pitfall and pan trapping. The composition of the vegetation and of the epigeic and vegetation inhabiting arthropod communities strongly differed between the crop types. This differentiation was mainly due to true species turnover and only to a lesser extent to the occurrence of nested subsets. On average, the total cover of the vegetation was 10 times higher in the SRC plantations and taxonomic and trait diversity were also consistently higher in SRC. Arthropod activity densities were significantly higher, sometimes almost double, in SRC plantations. Significantly higher effective species numbers in SRC were only retrieved for Hymenoptera and Coleoptera. Regarding functional groups, the activity densities of omnivores, detritivores, mycophages, phytophages and parasitoids were significantly higher in SRC. While activity densities of predators were not different among the crop types, their effective species number was higher in SRC, indicating a more evenly distributed and diverse predator community. To conclude, we have shown that SRC can significantly increase vegetation and arthropod abundance and/or diversity in agricultural landscapes when replacing annual biomass crops, such as maize.