UNASSIGNED: The intensification of the agricultural practices in Europe over the last decades has drastically transformed the agroecosystems. The simplification of the landscape, the loss of semi-natural habitats and the application of chemicals on crops led to biodiversity decline in agricultural landscapes, raising substantial concerns about the loss of essential ecosystem services, such as pollination or pest control. Depending on the location, the scale and the regional context, different indicator species groups (ISGs) are regularly surveyed to assess the state and trend of biodiversity changes in agroecosystems. Although the high diversity of these ISGs allows assessing different biodiversity aspects (e.g., trophic levels, bio-physical compartments, scale of indication), it complicates the interpretation of the results and thus their practical application. In addition, species diversity metrics are various, from simple species counts to more complex measurements of diversity indices, sometimes with antagonistic responses. Here, to meet the pressing need for synthesis in this complex topic, we follow a standardized systematic map protocol to collect and summarize the literature reporting field evidence of the effects of the main agricultural management practices (AMPs) in arable crops, grasslands and ecological infrastructures on a set of ISGs in European lowland farming areas.
UNASSIGNED: Searches of literature were made using online publication databases, search engine and specialist websites in English. Gathered publications were screened for relevance following inclusion/exclusion criteria published in a prior protocol. We extracted and mapped information about experimental design, monitoring methods, ISGs and AMPs studied and the diversity measures presented in each included publication. These parameters are structured in available data coding sheets.
UNASSIGNED: The search gathered 20,162 references from which 1208 remained after full text eligibility screening. Main areas studied are in Western Europe, and the number of studies increased exponentially from 1984 to 2022. Most publications are experimental and on-farm studies which assess AMPs effects at the field scale. Main studied AMPs are fertilization, grazing, organic farming, tillage, mowing and herbicide application. Most ISGs used to study their impacts are flora, carabids, spiders, birds, bees and annelids, often combined with other ISGs. The combinations between AMPs and ISGs studied are detailed as well as monitoring methods. The most used diversity measures are abundance, species richness, Shannon index, evenness, and community composition.
UNASSIGNED: We identified several knowledge clusters: (1) organic farming, fertilization, tillage, grazing and mowing impact on a wide range of ISGs, (2) flora response to agricultural practices, (3) annelids response to agronomic interventions that impact soil structure (e.g., tillage, fertilization, crop rotation, crop residue management), (4) butterflies and orthopterans response to mowing and grazing effects in grasslands, (5) the use of bird monitoring for the impact for assessing the efficiency of AES implementation at the landscape scale. We highlight that further research should be conducted on ISGs that are until now poorly studied regarding agricultural practices, such as amphibians, reptiles, gastropods, millipedes and centipedes. More field evidence of the effects of diversification practices such as intercropping, undersowing, intermediate cropping, and agroforestry are needed to draw conclusions on their benefits on biodiversity.
UNASSIGNED: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13750-024-00347-0.

World food supplies rely on pollination, making this plant-animal relationship a highly valued ecosystem service. Bees pollinate flowering plants in rangelands that constitute up to half of global terrestrial vegetation. Livestock grazing is the most widespread rangeland use and can affect insect pollinators through herbivory. We examined management effects on bee abundance and other insect pollinators on grazed and idle sagebrush rangelands in central Montana, USA. From 2016 to 2018, we sampled pollinators on lands enrolled in rest-rotation grazing, unenrolled grazing lands, and geographically separate idle lands without grazing for over a decade. Bare ground covered twice as much area (15% vs. 7) with half the litter (12% vs. 24) on grazed than idle regardless of enrollment. Bee pollinators were 2-3 times more prevalent in grazed than idle in 2016-2017. In 2018, bees were similar among grazed and idled during an unseasonably wet and cool summer that depressed pollinator catches; captures of secondary pollinators was similar among treatments 2 of 3 study years. Ground-nesting bees (94.6% of total bee abundance) were driven by periodic grazing that maintained bare ground and kept litter accumulations in check. In contrast, idle provided fewer nesting opportunities for bees that were mostly solitary, ground-nesting genera requiring unvegetated spaces for reproduction. Managed lands supported higher bee abundance that evolved with bison grazing on the eastern edge of the sagebrush ecosystem. Our findings suggest that periodic disturbance may enhance pollinator habitat, and that rangelands may benefit from periodic grazing by livestock.

Grazing plays a key role in ecosystem biogeochemistry, particularly soil carbon (C) pools. The non-trophic interactions between herbivores and soil processes through herbivore trampling have recently attracted extensive attention. However, their concurrent and legacy effects on the ecosystem properties and processes are still not clear, due to their effects being hard to separate via field experiments. In this study, we conducted a 2-year simulated-sheep-trampling experiment with four trampling intensity treatments (i.e., T0, T40, T80, and T120 for 0, 40, 80, and 120 hoofprints m-2, respectively) in a typical steppe to explore the concurrent and legacy effects of trampling on grassland ecosystem properties and processing. In 2017 (trampling treatment year), we found that trampling decreased aboveground biomass (AGB) of plant community and community-weighted mean shoot C concentration (CWM C), soil available nitrogen (N) and available phosphorus (P), but did not affect plant species diversity and belowground biomass (BGB). We show that compared with T0, trampling increased soil bulk density (BD) at T80, and decreased soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. After the cessation of trampling for two years (i.e., in 2019), previous trampling increased plant diversity and BGB, reaching the highest values at T80, but decreased soil available N and available P. Compared with T0, previous trampling significantly increased soil BD at T120, while significantly decreased CWM C at T80 and T120, and reduced SOC stocks at T80. Compared with 2017, the trampling negative legacy effects amplified at T80 but weakened at T40 and T120. We also show that trampling-induced decreases in soil available N, AGB of Fabaceae and CWM C were the main predictors of decreasing SOC stocks in 2017, while previous trampling-induced legacy effects on soil available P, AGB of Poaceae and CWM C contributed to the variations of SOC stocks in 2019. Taken together, short-term trampling with low intensity could maintain most plant functions, while previous trampling with low intensity was beneficial to most plant and soil functions. The results of this study show that T40 caused by sheep managed at a stocking rate of 2.7 sheep ha-1 is most suitable for grassland adaptive management in the typical steppe. The ecosystem functions can be maintained under a high stocking rate through the process of providing enough time to rebuild sufficient vegetation cover and restore soil through measures such as regional rotational grazing and seasonal grazing.

The alpine meadows of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have significant potential for storing soil carbon, which is important to global carbon sequestration. Grazing is a major threat to its potential for carbon sequestration. However, grazing poses a major threat to this potential by speeding up the breakdown of organic matter in the soil and releasing carbon, which may further lead to positive carbon-climate change feedback and threaten ecological security. Therefore, in order to accurately explore the driving mechanism and regulatory factors of soil organic matter decomposition in grazing alpine meadows on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, we took the grazing sample plots of typical alpine meadows as the research object and set up grazing intensities of different life cycles, aiming to explore the relationship and main regulatory factors of grazing on soil organic matter decomposition and soil microorganisms. The results show the following: (1) soil microorganisms, especially Acidobacteria and Acidobacteria, drove the decomposition of organic matter in the soil, thereby accelerating the release of soil carbon, which was not conducive to soil carbon sequestration in grassland; (2) the grazing triggering effect formed a positive feedback with soil microbial carbon release, accelerating the decomposition of organic matter and soil carbon loss; and (3) the grazing ban and light grazing were more conducive to slowing down soil organic matter decomposition and increasing soil carbon sequestration.

Recent losses in the abundance and diversity of arthropods have been documented in many regions and ecosystems. In grasslands, such insect declines are largely attributed to land use, including modern machinery and mowing regimes. However, the effects of different mowing techniques on arthropods remain poorly understood. Using 11 years of data from 111 agricultural grassland plots across Germany, we analyzed the influence of various grassland management variables on the abundance and abundance-accounted species richness of four arthropod orders: Araneae, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, and Orthoptera. The analysis focused on detailed mowing information, for example, days after mowing and mower type, and compared their effect with other aspects of grassland management, that is, rolling, leveling, fertilization, and grazing. We found strong negative effects of mowing on all four arthropod orders, with arthropod abundance being lowest directly after mowing and steadily increasing to three to seven times the abundance after 100 days post-mowing. Likewise, Hemiptera and Coleoptera species richness was 30% higher 100 days after mowing. Mower width showed a positive effect on Orthoptera abundance, but not on the other arthropods. Arthropod abundance and Coleoptera species richness were lowest when a mulcher was used compared to rotary or bar mowers. In addition to mowing, intensive grazing negatively affected Orthoptera abundance but not the other orders. Mowing represents a highly disturbing and iterative stressor with negative effects on arthropod abundance and diversity, likely contributed by mowing-induced mortality and habitat alteration. While modifications of mowing techniques such as mower type or mowing height and width may help to reduce the negative impact of mowing on arthropods, our results show that mowing itself has the most substantial negative effect. Based on our results, we suggest that reduced mowing frequency, omission of mowing in parts of the grassland (refuges), or extensive grazing instead of mowing have the greatest potential to promote arthropod populations.

Large nutrient levels and herbivory stress, particularly when acting together, drive a variety of responses in seagrass communities that ultimately may weaken their carbon balance. An in situ three-months experiment was carried out in two contrasting seasons to address the effects of two levels of nutrient load and three levels of artificial clipping on Cymodocea nodosa plants. Nutrient enrichment shifted the community from autotrophic to heterotrophic and reduced DOC fluxes in winter, whereas enhanced community carbon metabolism and DOC fluxes in summer. Herbivory stress decreased the net primary production in both seasons, whereas net DOC release increased in winter but decreased in summer. A reduction of seagrass food-web structure was observed under both disturbances evidencing impacts on the seagrass ecosystems services by altering the carbon transfer process and the loss of superficial OC, which may finally weaken the blue carbon storage capacity of these communities.

The dimensional Yale Food Addiction Scale for Children 2.0 (dYFAS-C 2.0) was developed to provide a reliable psychometric measure for assessing food addiction in adolescents, in accordance with the updated addiction criteria proposed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5). The present study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the dYFAS-C 2.0 among Portuguese adolescents and pre-adolescents and to explore the relationship between food addiction and other eating behaviors such as grazing and intuitive eating. The participants were 131 Portuguese adolescents and pre-adolescents (53.4% female and 46.6% male) aged between 10 and 15 years (Mage = 11.8) and with a BMI between 11.3 and 35.3 (MBMI z-score = 0.42). Confirmatory Factor Analysis demonstrated an adequate fit for the original one-factor model (χ2 (104) = 182; p < 0.001; CFI = 0.97; TLI = 0.97; NFI = 0.94; SRMR = 0.101; RMSEA = 0.074; 95% CI [0.056; 0.091]). Food addiction was positively correlated with higher grazing (r = 0.69, p < 0.001) and negatively correlated with lower reliance on hunger/satiety cues (r = -0.22, p = 0.015). No significant association was found between food addiction and BMI z-score, or between food addiction and age. The results support the use of dYFAS-C 2.0 as a valid and reliable measure for assessing food addiction in Portuguese adolescents and pre-adolescents. Furthermore, the findings highlight that food addiction may be part of a spectrum of disordered eating behaviors associated with control impairment. Future research with a larger sample size could further elucidate the associations between food addiction and other variables, such as psychological distress and multi-impulsive spectrum behaviors.

This experiment evaluated the performance, health, and physiological responses of high-risk steers receiving a Bacillus-based probiotic during a 90-d grazing period. A total of 240 Angus-influenced steers were used in this experiment that was replicated over 2 yr (120 steers/year). Each year, steers were obtained from an auction yard and transported to the experimental facility (120 km). Steer body weight (BW) was recorded at arrival (day -1), and this value was averaged with BW recorded on day 0 to represent the initial BW (236.6 ± 1.5 kg). On day 0, steers were ranked by BW and allocated to 1 of 12 pastures with stockpiled native grass (4-ha pastures; 10 steers/pasture). Pastures were randomly assigned to receive daily supplementation with dried distillers\' grains at 1% of BW containing either: 1) Bacillus subtilis + B. licheniformis probiotic (BOV; 2 g/steer daily of Bovacillus; Novonesis, Horsholm, Denmark) or 2) no feed additive (CON). Cattle received treatments from days 0 to 90, in addition to free-choice access to water and mineral + vitamin mix without ionophore. Steers were assessed for bovine respiratory disease (BRD) signs daily. Blood samples were collected and full BW was recorded on days 0, 14, 28, 56, and 90. Shrunk BW was recorded on day 91 after 16 h of feed and water restriction, and a 4% pencil shrink was used to calculate the final BW. Average daily gain (ADG) was calculated based on initial and final BW. No treatment effects were detected (P ≥ 0.73) for steer final BW and ADG. A treatment × day interaction was detected (P ≤ 0.05) for plasma haptoglobin concentration, which was greater for CON steers on days 14 and 28 (P ≤ 0.02). Incidence of BRD signs did not differ (P = 0.97) between treatments (51.7% and 51.3% for BOV and CON, respectively; SEM = 7.70). However, steer mortality + removals for health complications were greater (P = 0.01) in CON compared to BOV (0.00% vs. 5.04%, respectively; SEM = 1.41). Supplementing BOV improved (P ≤ 0.04) total pasture-based liveweight change (643 vs. 502 kg/pasture, respectively; SEM = 45) and final pasture-based total liveweight (3,007 vs. 2,869 kg/pasture, respectively; SEM = 46). Collectively, supplementation with a probiotic based on B. subtilis and B. licheniformis to high-risk stocker cattle did not alleviate the incidence of BRD signs nor improved ADG, but decreased acute-phase protein response, reduced steer mortality + removal, and increased pasture-based productivity during a 90-d grazing period.
Stocker cattle are exposed to several stressors within a short period of time, which impair their immunity and lead to bovine respiratory disease (BRD). With the increased regulations regarding the use of antimicrobials in cattle nutrition, novel dietary strategies to improve health and productivity of stocker cattle are warranted. One example is supplementing Bacillus-based probiotics, which promote performance and immunity in high-stress cattle. In this study, steers were purchased from a commercial auction yard soon after weaning, transported to the research facility, and assigned initial processing within a 48-h period. Steers were assigned to pastures and were supplemented or not with the Bacillus-based probiotic during a 90-d grazing period. In general, supplementing steers with the Bacillus-based probiotic did not impact growth rates or BRD incidence. However, no steers that received the Bacillus-based probiotic died from BRD consequences nor were removed from the experiment due to health reasons, whereas 5% of unsupplemented steers did not complete the 90-d experiment. Consequently, pasture-based liveweight gain was increased by 28% due to Bacillus-based probiotic supplementation. Results from this study indicate that supplementing a B. subtilis + B. licheniformis probiotic could be an alternative to improve the health and overall productivity of high-risk stocker cattle.

Climate and land-use change are key drivers of global change. Full-factorial field experiments in which both drivers are manipulated are essential to understand and predict their potentially interactive effects on the structure and functioning of grassland ecosystems. Here, we present 8 years of data on grassland dynamics from the Global Change Experimental Facility in Central Germany. On large experimental plots, temperature and seasonal patterns of precipitation are manipulated by superimposing regional climate model projections onto background climate variability. Climate manipulation is factorially crossed with agricultural land-use scenarios, including intensively used meadows and extensively used (i.e., low-intensity) meadows and pastures. Inter-annual variation of background climate during our study years was high, including three of the driest years on record for our region. The effects of this temporal variability far exceeded the effects of the experimentally imposed climate change on plant species diversity and productivity, especially in the intensively used grasslands sown with only a few grass cultivars. These changes in productivity and diversity in response to alterations in climate were due to immigrant species replacing the target forage cultivars. This shift from forage cultivars to immigrant species may impose additional economic costs in terms of a decreasing forage value and the need for more frequent management measures. In contrast, the extensively used grasslands showed weaker responses to both experimentally manipulated future climate and inter-annual climate variability, suggesting that these diverse grasslands are more resistant to climate change than intensively used, species-poor grasslands. We therefore conclude that a lower management intensity of agricultural grasslands, associated with a higher plant diversity, can stabilize primary productivity under climate change.

The aim of this study was to evaluate two levels of forage allowance (FA) during the prepartum period on metabolic, hormonal, productive, and reproductive variables in primiparous (P) and multiparous (M) beef cows. Six weeks before calving, 40 P and 42 M cows were assigned to two FA (native pastures) treatments until calving (day 0): High (15 kg DM/100 BW; H) and Low (5 kg DM/100 BW; L). After calving all cows were managed together. High FA cows presented greater intake than L cows, while M tended to have greater intake than P cows. Increased herbage allowance in late gestation in beef cows successfully improved forage intake and energy balance reflected in body condition score and metabolic and endocrine markers. Also, high forage allowance increased milk yield (5.4 vs 4.6 kg/d, P < 0.05) and calves daily gain rate during the first two months of age (0.88 vs 0.82 kg/d, P < 0.05) in H respect to L cows. Pregnancy rate was greater in H vs L cows (40 vs 28 %, P < 0,05). The endocrine metabolic response to higher forage allowance depended on parity, as primiparous cows showed a greater imbalance around calving. Moreover, most primiparous cows were not pregnant at the end of the breeding season, consistent with their prolonged anestrous. Multiparous cows had better productive and reproductive performance than primiparous cows, showing that growing cows have a pronounced negative energy balance reflected in most of the evaluated parameters.