Tag Archives: Biological Diversity

Rice fields foster biodiversity

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Restoration ecologists want to restore ecosystems that have been damaged or destroyed by human activity.  One approach they use is “rewilding” – which can mean different things to different people.  To some, rewilding involves returning large predators to an ecosystem, thereby reestablishing important ecological linkages.  To others, rewilding requires corridors that link different wild areas, so animals can migrate from one area to another.  One common thread in most concepts of rewilding is that once established, restored ecosystems should be self-sustaining, so that if ecosystems are left to their own devices, ecological linkages and biological diversity can return to pre-human-intervention levels, and remain at those levels in the future.

ardea intermedia (intermediate egret). photo by n. katayama

The intermediate egrit, Ardea intermedia, plucks a fish from a flooded rice field. Credit: N. Katayama.

Chieko Koshida and Naoki Katayama argue that rewilding may not always increase biological diversity.  In some cases, allowing ecosystems to return to their pre-human-intervention state can actually cause biological diversity to decline. Koshida and Katayama were surveying bird diversity in abandoned rice fields, and noticed that bird species distributions were different in long-abandoned rice fields in comparison to still-functioning rice fields.  To follow up on their observations, they surveyed the literature, and found 172 studies that addressed how rice field abandonment in Japan affected species richness (number of species) or abundance.  For the meta-analysis we will be discussing today, an eligible study needed to compare richness and/or abundance for at least two of three management states: (1) cultivated (tilled, flood irrigated, rice planted, and harvested every year), (2) fallow (tilled or mowed once every 1-3 years), and (3) long-abandoned (unmanaged for at least three years).

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Three different rice field management states – cultivated, fallow and long-abandoned – showing differences in vegetation and water conditions. Credit: C. Koshida.

Meta-analyses are always challenging, because the data are collected by many researchers, and for a variety of purposes.  For example, some researchers may only be interested in whether invasive species were present, or they may not be interested in how many individuals of a particular species were present. Ultimately 35 studies met Koshida and Katayama’s criteria for their meta-analysis (29 in Japanese and six in English).

Overall, abandoning or fallowing rice fields decreased species richness or abundance to 72% of the value of cultivated rice fields. As you might suspect, these effects were not uniform for different variables or comparisons. Not surprisingly, fish and amphibians declined sharply in abandoned rice fields – much more than other groups of organisms. Abundance declined more sharply in abandoned fields than did species richness.  Several other trends also emerged.  For example, complex landscapes such as yatsuda (forested valleys) and tanada (hilly terraces) were more affected than were simple landscapes.  In addition, wetter abandoned fields were able to maintain biological diversity, while dryer abandoned fields declined in richness and abundance.

koshidafig2

The effects of rice field abandonment or fallowing for eight different variables.  Effect size is the ln (Mt/Mc), where Mt = mean species richness or abundance for the treatment, and Mc = mean species richness for the control.  The treated field in all comparisons was the one that was abandoned for the longer time.  A positive effect size means that species richness or abundance  increased in the treated (longer abandoned) field, while a negative effect size means that species richness or abundance declined in the treated field. Numbers in parentheses are number of data sets used for comparisons.

When numerous variables are considered, researchers need to figure out which are most important.  Koshida and Katayama used a statistical approach known as “random forest” to model the impact of different variables on the reduction in biological diversity following abandonment.  This approach generates a variable – the percentage increase in mean square error (%increaseMSE) – which indicates the importance of each variable for the model (we won’t go into how this is done!).  As the graph below shows, soil moisture was the most important variable, which tells us (along with the previous figure above) that abandoned fields that maintained high moisture levels also kept their biological diversity, while those that dried out lost out considerably.  Management state was the second most important variable, as long-abandoned fields lost considerably more biological diversity than did fallow fields.

koshidafig4

Importance estimates of each variable (as measured by %increase MSE).  Higher values indicate greater importance.

Unfortunately, only three studies had data on changes in biological diversity over the long-term.  All three of these studies surveyed plant species richness over a 6 – 15 year period, so Koshida and Katayama combined them to explore whether plant species richness recovers following long-term rice field abandonment. Based on these studies, species richness continues to decline over the entire time period.

koshidafig6

Plant species richness in relation to time since rice fields were abandoned (based on three studies).

Koshida and Katayama conclude that left to their own devices, some ecosystems, like rice fields, will actually decrease, rather than increase, in biological diversity.  Rice fields are, however, special cases, because they provide alternatives to natural wetlands for many organisms dependent on aquatic/wetland environments (such as the frog below). In this sense, rice fields should be viewed as ecological refuges for these groups of organisms.

rana-porosa-porosa-tokyo-daruma-pond-frog.-photo-by-y.g.-baba.jpg

Rana porosa porosa (Tokyo Daruma Pond Frog). Credit: Y. G. Baba

These findings also have important management implications.  For example, conservation ecologists can promote biological diversity in abandoned rice fields by mowing and flooding. In addition, managers should pay particular attention to abandoned rice fields with complex structure, as they are particularly good reservoirs of biological diversity, and are likely to lose species if allowed to dry out. Failure to attend to these issues could lead to local extinctions of specialist wetland species and of terrestrial species that live in grasslands surrounding rice fields. Lastly, restoration ecologists working on other types of ecosystems need to carefully consider the effects on biological diversity of allowing those ecosystems to return to their natural state without any human intervention.

note: the paper that describes this research is from the journal Conservation Biology. The reference is Koshida, C. and Katayama, N. (2018), Meta‐analysis of the effects of rice‐field abandonment on biodiversity in Japan. Conservation Biology, 32: 1392-1402. doi:10.1111/cobi.13156. Thanks to the Society for Conservation Biology for allowing me to use figures from the paper. Copyright © 2018 by the Society for Conservation Biology. All rights reserved.

Biodiversity: it’s who you are

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It is a massive understatement that ecologists and conservation biologists are profoundly interested in how disturbance affects biological diversity. Humans are disturbing ecosystems by degrading or destroying habitat, by fragmenting habitat into pieces that are too small to sustain populations, by directly overexploiting species for consumption or other purposes, and by introducing non-native species (and there’s more!). Some biologists argue that disturbance has gotten so severe that we need to modify our worldview of ecosystems. They argue, for example, that intact grasslands are so rare that we should stop talking about them as an ecosystem (or biome), but rather should more realistically explore the ecology of different types of croplands, which are, in actuality, primarily disturbed grasslands.

Some types of ecosystems, such as rainforests, have survived human impact more than others, but all have been highly disturbed. So it is fitting that conservation ecologists devote their attentions to understanding how disturbance influences biological diversity. Working in Cameroon in 1998, John Lawton and his colleagues assessed species richness (number of different species) in relation to level of disturbance experienced by eight different animal groups: canopy beetles, flying beetles, butterflies, canopy ants, leaf-litter ants, nematodes, termites, and birds. They discovered that more intense disturbances were associated with a significant reduction in species richness for many of the groups.

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Tropical forest in Cameroon. Credit: Earwig via Wikimedia Commons

Nigel Stork worked with Lawton on the original study, and recently reanalyzed the data in the context of changes that have occurred in how conservation biologists view biological diversity. For example, many biologists now argue that conserving biological diversity requires understanding which species are affected by disturbance, rather than the number of species. In addition, not all disturbances have similar impacts on biological diversity. For example, logging with heavy equipment removes trees and compacts soil, while logging with lighter equipment does not compact soil, so the two treatments may have very different impacts. Finally, it may be more informative to group species according to ecosystem function rather than by taxonomic group.

StorkFig1

Locations of sampling plots within the Mbalmayo Forest Reserve, Cameroon.  The three blown-up sites had multiple plots with different levels of disturbance, as indicated by the key.

Stork and his colleagues only had data for six of the original eight taxonomic groups. They categorized intensity of disturbance based on how much tree biomass was removed, level of soil compaction, time since disturbance, and tree cover and diversity at time of sampling. This allowed the researchers to assign a disturbance index to each plot, with 0 indicating least disturbed and 1.0 indicating most disturbed. This analysis showed no significant relationship between disturbance and species richness in five of the six taxonomic groups, with only termites declining in richness in response to disturbance.

StorkFig3

Species richness in relation to intensity of disturbance for six taxonomic groups considered in the study.

Stork and his colleagues used a slightly different approach to assess the response of species composition (the identity of species that are actually present in the community) to disturbance. They compared each pair of surveyed plots in relation to how different they were in disturbance. Plots with very different levels of disturbance had disturbance dissimilarities close to 1.0, while plots with similar levels of disturbance had disturbance dissimilarities near 0. They then looked at community dissimilarity to explore changes in species composition. Plots with a community dissimilarity near 1.0 had very different species, while plots with a community dissimilarity near 0 had very similar species.

Here’s what they found. For five of six groups, disturbance dissimilarity was associated with significant (solid line) or borderline significant (dashed line) increases in community dissimilarity. So even though the number of species was not affected very much by disturbance (excepting termites), species composition was affected in all groups, with the exception of canopy ants. They conclude that a disturbed forest has very different types of species in it, but not necessarily fewer species.

StorkFig2

Community dissimilarity in relation to disturbance dissimilarity. For five taxonomic groups, plots that had the greatest differences in disturbance also had the greatest differences in species composition.

Lastly, this study shows that response to disturbance is related to the functional group – the role that each species plays within the community. For example, beetles showed a strong response to disturbance, but in reality the strong response was only true for the herbivorous beetle functional group. Beetles that ate fungi or were predators or scavengers showed relatively little change in species composition in relation to disturbance.

So what should conservation ecologists do with this information? Given the diversity and intensity of disturbance globally, we need to develop a better understanding of how species and communities respond to global change. Species composition may be a more sensitive indicator of disturbance than is species richness. Functional groups may be more helpful than taxonomic groups in identifying how disturbance influences how ecosystems actually work. Perhaps monitoring particular functional groups can give us insight into how unrelated groups with similar ecology might respond to a world that promises to experience increasing levels of disturbance.

note: I discuss two papers in this blog.  The original is from the journal Nature. The reference is Lawton, J.H., Bignell, D.E., Bolton, B., Bloemers, G.F., Eggleton, P., Hammond, P. M., Hodda, M., Holt, R.D., Larsen, T.B., Mawdsley, N.A., Stork, N.E., Srivastava, D.S., and Watt, A.D. 1998. Biodiversity inventories, indicator taxa and effects of habitat modification in tropical forest. Nature, 391: 72-76. The second paper that reanalyzes the original data is from the journal Conservation Biology. The reference is Stork, N.E., Srivastava, D.S., Eggleton, P., Hodda, M., Lawson, G., Leakey, R.R.B. and Watt, A.D., 2017. Consistency of effects of tropical‐forest disturbance on species composition and richness relative to use of indicator taxa. Conservation Biology 31 (4): 924-933. Thanks to the Society for Conservation Biology for allowing me to use figures from the paper. Copyright © 2017 by the Society for Conservation Biology. All rights reserved.