Landscape mediated changes in farmland bird communities and effects on ecosystem services and disservices

The ongoing simplification of landscapes due to agricultural intensification comes at the cost of ad-verse effects on farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, which may have negative feedbacks on sustainable crop production. While the effects of landscape structure and agricultural management on communities of arthropods and arthropod-mediated ecosystem services have been studied previously, we lack a mechanistic understanding of such effects on ecosystem services and disservices provided by birds.
Predation on invertebrates and seeds is among the most important ecosystem functions of birds and can act as both service and disservice. With a meta-analysis on the feeding preferences of farmland birds we expect to gain a better understanding about factors that affect the consumption of pest and beneficial organisms by farmland birds in general. By means of field experiments providing seed and invertebrate prey (sentinels) and a camera-monitoring setup that will be supplemented by field observations, we aim at delineating the impact of landscape structure and management regime (organic vs. conventional) on bird communities and associated services. By providing crop and arable weed seeds, as well as beneficial and pest invertebrates we will quantify the service/disservice ratio provided by local bird communities. The setup will be complemented by predator exclusion treatments for birds, mammals and arthropods to identify the relative contribution of different groups to the provision of services and disservices. Analyzing the collected community data by using existing databases on functional traits will additionally improve the mechanistic understanding of effects of agricultural intensification on service provision.
With this project we expect to contribute to the understanding of interactions between landscape composition and management on bird communities and related services and disservices. This will help to identify the requirements for a high service-to-disservice ratio and ideally allows recommendations to improve the sustainability of agricultural production. As ecosystem services are benefits that nature provides to society, the results from the proposed project will be disseminated to have impact on different groups involved in agriculture, e.g. scientists, policy-makers and farmers. With their outstanding excellence in research on ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services and community interactions, both hosts and the host institution are expected to provide a highly inspiring research environment that will significantly contribute to my future career development.