DOI: 10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfxv0
title: Experimental evidence that novel land management interventions inspired by history enhance biodiversity

description: To address biodiversity declines within semi-natural habitats,
 land-management must cater for diverse taxonomic groups. Integrating our
 understanding of the ecological requirements of priority (rare, scarce or
 threatened) species through ‘biodiversity auditing’, with that of the
 intensity and complexity of historical land-use, encourages novel forms of
 management. Experimental confirmation is needed to establish whether this
 enhances biodiversity conservation relative to routine management.
 Biodiversity auditing and historical land-use of dry-open terrestrial
 habitats in Breckland (Eastern England) both encourage management
 incorporating ground-disturbance and spatio-temporal variability. To test
 biodiversity conservation outcomes, we developed 40 4-ha management
 complexes over three successive winters, of which 20 were
 shallow-cultivated (rotovation) and 20 deep-cultivated (ploughing),
 stratified across 3,850-ha of closed-sward dry grassland and lowland
 heathland (collectively ‘dry grassland’). Complexes comprised four 1-ha
 sub-treatments: repeat-cultivation, first-time-cultivation, one-year-old
 fallow and two-year-old fallow. We examined responses of vascular plants;
 spiders; true bugs; ground, rove and ‘other’ beetles; bees and wasps;
 ants; and true flies on treatment complexes and 21 4-ha untreated
 controls. Sampling gave 132,251 invertebrates from 877 species and 28,846
 plant observations from 167 species. Resampling and rarefaction analyses
 showed shallow- and deep-cultivation both doubled priority species
 richness (pooling sub-treatments within complexes) compared to controls.
 Priority spider, ground beetle, other beetle, and true bug richness were
 greater on both treatments than controls. Responses were strongest for
 those priority dry-open-habitat associated invertebrates initially
 predicted (by biodiversity auditing) to benefit from heavy
 physical-disturbance. Assemblage composition (pooling non-priority and
 priority species) varied between sub-treatments for plants, ants, true
 bugs, spiders, ground, rove and other beetles; but only one-year-old
 fallowed deep-cultivation increased priority richness across multiple
 taxa. Treatments produced similar biodiversity responses across various
 dry grassland ‘habitats’ that differed in plant composition, allowing
 simplified management guidance. Synthesis and applications. Our
 landscape-scale experiment confirmed the considerable biodiversity value
 of interventions inspired by history and informed by systematic multi-taxa
 analysis of ecological requirements across priority biota. Since
 assemblage composition varied between sub-treatments, providing
 heterogeneity in management will support the widest suite of species.
 Crucially, the intended recipients responded most strongly, suggesting
 biodiversity audits could successfully inform interventions within other
 systems.
description: Sampling protocols are
 outlined in the <em>Journal of Applied Ecology</em>
 paper.
description: The attached ReadMe.txt
 file explains the content of the .csv file.