Area and configuration of both semi‐natural habitats and vineyards influence arthropods in South African and central European agricultural landscapes

Abstract

Abstract Restoring the heterogeneity of farmland mosaics can help mitigate the ongoing global decline of biodiversity. It has been shown that semi‐natural habitats in viticultural landscapes influence biodiversity in vineyards. However, less attention has been paid to the influence of the extent of vineyard fields and their arrangement in the landscape. Using previously published data, we investigated the influence of both semi‐natural habitats and vineyard fields on arthropod diversity in vineyards in 35 viticultural landscapes located in South Africa and Austria. Effects on several arthropod groups were assessed using standardised landscape predictors that integrate compositional (total area) and configurational (shape and spatial arrangement) heterogeneity of semi‐natural habitats and vineyards. In addition, we assessed the influence of within‐vineyard vegetation cover and farming system (organic or non‐organic) to explore local‐scale effects. Within‐vineyard vegetation and flower cover had a consistent positive influence on most arthropod taxa, whereas farming system had little effect. In addition, configurational heterogeneity of semi‐natural vegetation and vineyards influenced several taxa. However, different taxa showed contrasting relationships with configurational heterogeneity, hindering general recommendations for optimal configuration of semi‐natural elements and vineyards in the landscape. The only significant response to compositional heterogeneity was bug abundance in South Africa, which increased with increasing proportion of semi‐natural elements. We found that increasing vegetation cover in vineyards is an effective and easily implementable measure to improve biodiversity in vineyards. In addition, the spatial arrangement of vineyards influences within‐vineyard arthropod diversity as much as the spatial arrangement of semi‐natural vegetation in the landscape, which expands the possibilities for planning viticultural landscapes with high overall biodiversity.