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Review
. 2021 Oct 23;21(1):193.
doi: 10.1186/s12862-021-01911-9.

European agroforestry has no unequivocal effect on biodiversity: a time-cumulative meta-analysis

Anne-Christine Mupepele  1   2 , Matteo Keller  3 , Carsten F Dormann  3
Affiliations
Review

European agroforestry has no unequivocal effect on biodiversity: a time-cumulative meta-analysis

Anne-Christine Mupepele et al. BMC Ecol Evol. .

Abstract

Background: Agroforestry is a production system combining trees with crops or livestock. It has the potential to increase biodiversity in relation to single-use systems, such as pastures or cropland, by providing a higher habitat heterogeneity. In a literature review and subsequent meta-analysis, we investigated the relationship between biodiversity and agroforestry and critically appraised the underlying evidence of the results.

Results: Overall, there was no benefit of agroforestry to biodiversity. A time-cumulative meta-analysis demonstrated the robustness of this result between 1991 and 2019. In a more nuanced view silvopastoral systems were not more diverse in relation to forests, pastures or abandoned silvopastures. However, silvoarable systems increased biodiversity compared to cropland by 60%. A subgroup analysis showed that bird and arthropod diversity increased in agroforestry systems, while bats, plants and fungi did not.

Conclusion: Agroforestry increases biodiversity only in silvoarable systems in relation to cropland. But even this result is of small magnitude, and single-study effect sizes were heterogeneous with sometimes opposing conclusions. The heterogeneity suggests the importance of other, usually unmeasured variables, such as landscape parameters or land-use history, influencing biodiversity in agroforestry systems.

Keywords: Arthropods; Birds; Silvoarable; Silvopastoral; Silvopasture; Species richness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA flow diagram [24, 25]
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Map of Europe with the number of effect sizes per country
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Number of effect sizes in each combination of agroforestry system, comparator and biodiversity group
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Forest plot for silvopasture and silvoarable systems with subgroup summary effect sizes (grey diamonds) per system (silvoarable, silvopastoral) and per control type (pasture/cropland, forest or abandoned agroforestry system)
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Arthropod subgroup analysis with summary effect sizes (grey diamonds). Taxonomic groups are provided in more detail depending on reported groups in primary studies. Letters on the right side reflect the first letter of the control type (P=Pasture, C=Cropland, F=Forests, A=Abandoned)
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Cumulative forest plot, showing the summary effect sizes with always one individual effect size added over time. Colour code for the biodiversity groups indicate no clustering of any group in the time series
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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