Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

The potential of alternative agricultural systems, such as organic or conservation agriculture, for biodiversity restoration has been widely investigated. However, variability of practices within each of these two categories of agricultural system has rarely been accounted for. Furthermore, these systems have most often been studied separately, isolating either organic or conservation agriculture (itself often reduced to a soil tillage reduction), and rarely analyzing these systems side by side. This study attempts to disentangle these multiple interrelationships by sampling carabid beetles in a network of 48 commercial Belgian farms including organic agriculture (OA), conservation agriculture (CA), farms combining the two approaches (OCA) and farms applying conventional practices (CVA). In each farm, we sampled carabids using pitfall and emergence traps in one winter cereal field and collected a detailed description of crop management practices. We found that community composition was primarily structured by seasonality early in the season (March, April) followed by convergence (May, June) driven by the aggregation of the most dominant species. Based on agroecosystem classification, organic certification (i.e., the absence of synthetic pesticide use) exerted a twofold stronger effect than application of conservation agriculture principles (i.e., reduced or no soil tillage) on carabid beetle community composition. Notably, OCA supported carabid assemblages that were structurally distinct from those of CA and CVA. Furthermore, carabid communities associated with OA differed significantly in composition from those of CVA. Observed and estimated species richness were also significantly higher in OCA than in CA and CVA, while OA differed from CVA only for observed richness. Beyond differences among agricultural systems, community responses were associated with specific management practices, which explained nearly a quarter of the compositional variation with significant influence of the duration since organic conversion and the frequency of synthetic pesticide application. Carabid abundances were negatively affected by synthetic pesticides and moldboard ploughing, whereas richness was more strongly related to the time since conversion to OA, cover crops, and organic amendments. Overall, these results position synthetic inputs and time since conversion as the main filters over carabid communities. Our study highlights the importance of jointly considering system level analyses and detailed management practices to better understand the complex relationships between agricultural practices and carabid communities.

Carbon farming practices are increasingly adopted as part of regenerative agriculture to enhance soil carbon sequestration and improve agricultural sustainability. However, their effects on the phyllosphere microbiome, and how these interact with field biodiversity, remain poorly understood. We investigated how field biodiversity and carbon farming practices (cover crops, all-in mixes, adaptive grazing and ley mixture) influence leaf microbial communities across 19 Finnish farms using ITS and 16S amplicon sequencing. Foliar fungal - but not bacterial - diversity increased with plant species richness. Carbon farming altered both fungal and bacterial community composition, but only fungal community was positively associated with disease load. Network analysis identified three candidate keystone taxa: Alternaria sp. (FASV 34) and Sporobolomyces roseus (FASV 2070), which were mutually exclusive, and Methylobacterium sp. (BASV 75), which co-occurred with FASV 2070. Together, these findings demonstrate that different carbon farming practices shape distinct leaf microbiomes cover crop systems tending to favor potential fungal pathogens, whereas ley mixture and adaptive grazing strategies promote microbial taxa associated with healthier phyllosphere communities. Our study underscores the importance of understanding the complex microbial interactions within leaf ecosystems to inform sustainable agricultural practices.

Soil degradation is a widespread challenge that requires a broad response at the individual farm level. To ensure effectivity, the practices should be tailored to the farm context: land manager objectives and farm specific challenges. These have however been difficult to quantify. Here we demonstrate that a workable farm context can be created based on a value survey, open satellite and soil data, and published models for vegetation gross primary productivity and soil erosion. Based on the findings, despite individual differences, farmers value profitability and operational efficiency, but also biodiversity and soil health. At least the regenerative farmers surveyed also value working for the greater good more than maintaining tradition or power. In spite of wide differences in farm production orientation, we also found that each farm also had a broad variation in individual fields GPP. Most fields have a stable GPP level, which is either high or low, and that there is a 2-3-fold difference between the weakest and best producing fields indicating the potential for improving GPP by improving the growing conditions on currently weak fields. In addition, soil loss was found to be highly concentrated in critical source areas, where 10% of the field area contributed to 50% of the soil loss. Overall, open data can be linked to modelling workflows to rapidly produce a decision-making context for farmers. This facilitates benchmarking and co-learning as well as enables land managers and advisors to identify the farm context for planning effective responses to soil degradation.

Palm oil is the worlds leading vegetable oil, with production continuing to expand, particularly across Southeast Asia. Within established plantations, conserving and restoring riparian margins can reduce erosion, improve connectivity, and support biodiversity. Simultaneously, climate change is increasing thermal stress within tropical agricultural landscapes, raising the potential importance of riparian buffers as microclimatic refugia, although this has not previously been evaluated. The Riparian Ecosystem Restoration in Tropical Agriculture (RERTA) Project is a long-term Before-After Control-Impact experiment established within oil palm plantations in Riau, Indonesia, to evaluate alternative riparian restoration strategies following plantation replanting. Treatments included passive restoration (retaining mature oil palms and allowing natural regeneration), active restoration (enrichment planting with six native tree species), and a control (replanting immature oil palms to the river edge). Six years after restoration, we assessed vegetation structure using terrestrial laser scanning and thermal stability using temperature loggers and thermal imaging. We also evaluated the long-term temperature buffering capacity of each treatment under current and projected climates using CHELSA climate data and downscaled outputs from multiple General Circulation Models under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios for 2045 and 2085. Active restoration produced greater structural complexity, a more closed canopy, and cooler, more thermally stable conditions than passive restoration and control treatments. Restored margins also contained significantly more cool surface microhabitats, reducing thermal extremes under both current and future climate scenarios. Our findings demonstrate that active restoration of riparian margins can enhance thermal buffering and create microclimatic refugia for biodiversity within tropical oil palm landscapes. As agricultural intensification and climate change continue to reshape tropical ecosystems, restoring structurally complex riparian vegetation will be critical for sustaining biodiversity and the ecosystem services upon which agricultural production depends.

Temporal stability of plant populations is a key determinant of species coexistence and ecosystem functioning, yet its trait-based explanation has remained largely aboveground. Whether root functional traits contribute to long-term population stability remains poorly understood, despite roots mediating water and nutrient acquisition. We combined 17 years of vegetation monitoring from 150 temperate grassland plots across three regions in Germany with root functional trait data for 72 common grassland species. Temporal stability was computed as coefficient of variation (CV), with lower CV indicating higher stability. We tested whether root traits predict stability, and specifically which belowground dimensions from resource acquisition/conservation or soil exploration dominate, and whether differences in land use intensity modifies these relationships. Root traits were stronger and more consistent predictors of temporal stability than the classical aboveground traits specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf dry matter content (LDMC). Higher average root diameter (AD), root hair incidence (RHI), specific root length (SRL), and root tissue density (RTD) were generally associated with higher temporal stability, although the strength of these relationships varied among regions. Land use modified selected trait and stability relationships, with the strongest shifts occurring along the mowing gradient. Increasing mowing strengthened the associations of higher RHI and RTD with temporal stability, whereas the associations of AD and root N shifted towards lower stability. Our results identify belowground functional traits as an important missing component of trait-based temporal stability research and advance our understanding of the functional strategies underlying population temporal stability in managed semi-natural grasslands.

Morphological variation in insects can indicate responses to habitat change and land use intensification, with potential consequences for trophic interactions. In insect host-parasitoid systems, host body is often a key determinant of offspring development and emergence success, as well as parasitoid host-selection behavior. Yet, most studies in agricultural landscapes have focused on size variation in crop-associated insects (i.e.: pests, pollinators and enemies), leaving those relying on non-crop resources largely unexplored. Here, we investigated how agroenvironmental contexts and trophic resource availability influence puparial size in Protocalliphora sialia (Diptera: Calliphoridae), an obligate hematophagous ectoparasite of Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) nestlings. We further tested whether puparial size affects emergence probability and risk of parasitoidism by Nasonia spp. (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) jewel wasps. Using 1,513 P. sialia puparia from 88 nests within a nest-box monitoring system spanning a 10,200-km^2 east-west intensification gradient in southern Quebec, Canada, we evaluated how agrointensive contexts, avian host availability, and ectoparasite densities influence puparial size, parasitoidism risk, and emergence success. The agricultural context appears to shape puparial size through survival biases and/or altered growth rates. In agroextensive contexts (i.e.: pastures, forages with high tree cover), where Protocalliphora are more numerous, P. sialia puparia were smaller and exhibited greater size variation. Conversely, in agrointensive environments (maize and soybeans monocultures with higher doses of pesticides), where Protocalliphora are fewer, small individuals were underrepresented, suggesting a selective mortality in P. sialia population. However, puparial size explained less than 10% of the variation in emergence or parasitism, likely reflecting consistently high parasitic pressure from Nasonia wasps, which infested 50-90% of puparia, depending on site and year. Our findings highlight the importance of selective mortality in structuring trait distributions and modulating multi-trophic interactions in human-modified landscapes.

1. Grassland ecosystems are pivotal for global biodiversity, carbon (C) storage and food security. This biome, however, together with the ecosystem services it provides, is threatened by global change perturbations. These perturbations rarely occur in isolation and most often affect environments simultaneously, which is a pressing issue in ecology. Nevertheless, most of the research conducted so far has focussed on single simultaneous perturbations or pairs thereof. The few examples considering the effect of more than two simultaneous perturbations focussed only on plants or soil separately, which ignores the potential buffering or feedback effects on ecosystem functioning induced by plant-soils interactions. 2. To tackle this knowledge gap, we used an experimental setup involving mesocosms (soil and plants intact) collected in an extensively managed permanent grassland. Mesocosms were arranged in a greenhouse experiment where we applied individual and combined global change perturbations (up to ten in total) including application of fertilisers, pesticides and antibiotics, simulated trampling and grazing, heat stress and drought. Measured ecosystem functions and properties included a large set of biological, physical and chemical soil and plant associated variables. 3. Results showed that multiple perturbations in most cases had negative effects irrespective of the direction found for individual perturbations. However, in contrast to previous bare soil experiments, we only found scarce evidence for substantial synergistic effects of simultaneous perturbations in our experiment conducted with mesocosms that contained vegetation. This suggests a mitigating impact of plants on soil responses to global change. Moreover, we found a strong dominative effect of drought on ecosystem functioning, driving most of the effects observed. 4. Synthesis: Our results highlight the importance of evaluating global change impacts under more realistic settings, i.e., applying multiple perturbations simultaneously and including plant-soil interactions. Mitigation of global change in terrestrial ecosystems will only be possible once we holistically understand how ecosystems respond to altered conditions.

Soil is one of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet, yet the extent of soil biodiversity knowledge in Canada is unknown. To better understand our knowledge, we systematically mapped soil invertebrate biodiversity knowledge from peer-reviewed literature to identify spatial and taxonomic gaps and to assess whether areas projected to experience different magnitudes of climate change are adequately sampled. A total of 1,176 Canadian sampling locations were identified from 427 articles. We found biases in sampling coverage spatially and in relation to current and projected climatic conditions. The geographic region above 60 degrees North is sparsely sampled. Colder regions (< -0.12 C) and regions receiving the least (< 646.47 mm), moderately high (2268.67 to 2809.40 mm), and high (2809.40 to 3350.14 mm) amounts of precipitation were under sampled. Regions projected to have the smallest (< 0.86 C) and greatest (> 1.59 C) magnitudes in temperature change and regions projected to have moderate (-2.06 to +2.69 mm) to large changes (+2.69 to +7.44 mm) in precipitation were underrepresented. The sampled locations also suffer from taxonomic biases which were skewed toward Nematoda (19%), Annelida (18%), Acari (15%), and Collembola (14%). Our results suggest that methods such as stratified sampling is essential to capture underrepresented regions, taxonomic groups, and an array of current and projected climatic conditions. Additionally, shifting to a multispecies sampling approach is essential for broader soil ecosystem knowledge. Importantly, data from well-sampled areas should be examined to determine how it can be leveraged to advance conservation management of soil invertebrates.

Stink bugs (Hemiptera Pentatomidae) are major agricultural pests worldwide, including both native and invasive species. In France, for instance, Halyomorpha halys has rapidly expanded its range, affecting key crops such as hazelnuts, apples, and vegetables. Meanwhile, several native, polyphagous species - Nezara viridula, Palomena prasina and, to a lesser extent, Graphosoma italicum - are re-emerging and impacting diverse crops because of changes in agricultural practices and climatic conditions. Egg parasitoids represent promising biological control agents for these pests, be it through conservation, augmentation or introduction biological control. However, their actual potential is not precisely documented due to a lack of ambitious surveys and possible taxonomic issues. This study aims to address this gap by compiling results obtained from various of egg parasitism surveys of Pentatomidae in France and implementing a large-scale DNA Barcoding approach (2000 individuals) for the emerged parasitoids. Our results indicate a high diversity of egg parasitoids, and detected some taxonomic issues and molecular inconsistencies that warrant further study. Among the three families of egg parasitoids recovered (Encyrtidae, Eupelmide, and Scelionidae), Scelionidae was the most abundant and diverse with nine species of Trissolcus (including the two adventive species, Tr. japonicus and Tr. mitsukurii) and four Telenomus species (including two unidentified to species). Scelionidae dominated the parasitoid assemblages associated with most of the Pentatomidae host species, except for H. halys for which the eupelmid Anastatus bifasciatus was the most common species.

Abstract Background: Soil microbiomes play critical roles in plant health and resilience, yet it is still poorly understood how disruptions in local microbial communities, such as during soil management, impact these ecological functions. In this study, we investigated how compost addition, a widely used soil management practice, and microbiome origin influence microbiome-mediated plant resistance to insects. We combined surveys of working organic farms across New York with controlled laboratory experiments, amplicon sequencing, plant-insect bioassays, and mass spectrometry. Results: Compost use was associated with shifts in the relative abundance of 20 fungal and 2 bacterial genera across ten working farms. However, no consistent changes in bacterial or fungal diversity or community structure in fields with compost were observed across the farms. Under controlled conditions using a common compost source, compost increased rhizosphere microbial diversity and significantly altered rhizosphere community structure, including the relative abundance of 6 fungal and 41 bacterial genera. Despite these substantial community-level changes, compost did not affect populations of green peach aphids (Myzus persicae) on kale (Brassica oleracea). Instead, aphid populations and plant salicylic acid concentrations were more strongly associated with microbiome origin, demonstrating that compost can substantially restructure soil and rhizosphere microbial communities without corresponding changes in microbiome-mediated plant resistance to insects. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that microbial diversity and compositional responses to management are not necessarily reliable indicators of all microbiome functions. More broadly, this work highlights the importance of local soil microbiome variation in shaping plant-insect interactions and emphasizes the need to link community-level responses to direct functional measurements when evaluating microbiome responses to agricultural management.

1. Grassland biodiversity restoration efforts have largely focused on re-establishing diverse plant communities, with less attention paid to higher trophic levels such as invertebrates. 2. We established a controlled, field-scale restoration experiment across twelve lowland grassland sites in Switzerland in close collaboration with farmers. We manipulated seed addition (hay transfer, directly harvested seeds, or multiplied seed mixtures) and soil disturbance (shallow or deep tillage), with treatments applied to meadows covering, on average, 0.5 ha. Four to six years after restoration, we quantified the components of species richness change (lost, persisting, gained from site surroundings, and gained from donors), and estimated dark diversity (species that are absent from a location but could potentially occur there) for plants, Auchenorrhyncha and Orthoptera. 3. Compared to plants, invertebrates exhibited greater species turnover, with higher proportions of species lost and gained from the surroundings, but much lower contributions from the donor meadows. However, species persistence was high across taxa. Restoration operations strongly influenced components of species richness change in plants but had weaker effects on invertebrates. In particular, multiplied seed mixtures + deep tillage had the highest proportion of plant species not transferred, suggesting that many species in the seed mixture were poorly suited to local conditions. In both plants and Auchenorrhyncha, components of species richness change were strongly mediated by site characteristics, with initial species richness in both receiver and donor emerging as the strongest predictors. 4. Within each taxonomic group, 41% of species not transferred from the donor belonged to the dark diversity, suggesting substantial unrealized restoration potential. Restoration operations impacted dark diversity for plants and Auchenorrhyncha but not for Orthoptera. In plants, dark diversity was substantially lower under multiplied seed mixtures + deep tillage than under other treatments. The probability of a species belonging to dark diversity was associated with specific leaf area in plants and initial relative abundance in Auchenorrhyncha. 5. Synthesis and applications. Components of species richness change were influenced by both restoration operations and site characteristics, with their relative importance varying among taxa, underscoring the need for multi-taxon restoration strategies.

Soil nematodes play key roles in regulating organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling and trophic interactions in the soil ecosystem, and are very useful bioindicators of soil condition and soil health. But to characterise them, we need reliable measurements of nematode biodiversity in soils. DNA-based techniques such as metabarcoding have recently explored their biodiversity, with successful results. However, there are many methodological steps that can modify the outcome considerably and require informed decisions. In this study, we tested the effect on nematode alpha and beta diversity metrics of three methodological steps, namely i) type of extraction of genetic material from the matrix, either from soil directly with different starting amount of material or extracting nematodes first via the Baermann or Oostenbrink methods, ii) the choice of taxonomically-relevant DNA segment for amplification, with a nematode specific primer (NemF/18Sr2b) and a universal eukaryotic primer (3NDf/1132rmod), both within 18S rDNA, and iii) the selection of appropriate reference library for taxonomic assignment (comparing three nematode specialised databases and three broad taxonomic databases). Observed differences in alpha diversity were more pronounced when comparing the nematode extraction vs soil extractions. In particular, direct soil extractions co-extracted many non-nematode taxa, especially if amplified with a universal primer, which can significantly reduce the number of nematode reads obtained and therefore the accuracy of nematode community indexes and other nematode-based metrics. The choice of the reference database strongly affected the taxonomic identification, which calls for extreme caution when making this selection. Notably, specialised databases tended to over assign reads to nematodes that were detected as non-nematodes by broad taxonomic databases. However, beta diversity metrics were consistent across methods, highlighting these metrics as robust against methodological choices. Our study clearly demonstrates that the choices of methods for nematode biodiversity studies using molecular tools can have a big impact on the results, and decisions should be made consciously and carefully.

Rubber vines (Cryptostegia madagascariensis and C. grandiflora) are highly invasive weeds in the semi-arid landscapes of many tropical regions. The rust fungus Maravalia cryptostegiae has provided a spetatular and sustainable control of invasive C. grandiflora populations in Australia, after its scientific and quarantine-authorized release in the context of a classical biological control program. The Caatinga biome of Northeastern Brazil is under a devastating invasion by C. madagascariensis. This species is also susceptible to M. cryptostegia but its epidemic potential towards C. madagascariensis in Brazil remains unknown. We developed a weather-driven epidemiological model integrating experimentally derived relationships for infection as a function of temperature and wetness duration and for temperature-dependent latent development. Three infection-response models were fitted to 20 experimental temperature x wetness combinations from the literature and compared using information criteria, grouped cross-validation and a parametric bootstrap. The selected model, in which thermal breadth increases with wetness duration, was best supported (R2 = 0.931; {Delta}AICc [&ge;] 3.3 relative to the alternatives), and prolonged wetness significantly broadened the thermal range favorable for infection ({gamma} = 0.30 oC h-1; bootstrap P = 0.002). The infection and latent-development models were coupled with 25 years (2001-2025) of hourly NASA POWER data for 65 grid cells representing rubber-vine-infested locations in Northeastern Brazil, with wetness defined as hours with relative humidity equal or greater than 90%. Infection potential was concentrated in March-June (73% of the annual total, peaking in April), coinciding with the regional rainy season, and was highest in the interior of northern and central Ceara. Predicted potential varied more than a hundredfold among grid cells and was lowest along parts of the Ceara coast and the lower Jaguaribe valley, which include some of the largest infestations; the magnitude of these contrasts depended on the humidity threshold used to define wetness. Applied with identical rules to 13 historical release sites in Queensland, Australia, the model reproduced the documented wet-season timing of rust activity, and predicted potential was on average higher at sites with reported high rust impact, although the difference was not statistically significant. These results indicate strong seasonal and geographic structuring of weather-driven epidemic potential and provide testable hypotheses for selecting release periods and locations for M. cryptostegiae in Brazil.

Subsurface tile drainage rapidly transports nutrients and biological contaminants to surface waters, yet multi-year evaluations of drainage water management (DWM) effects on nutrients, Escherichia coli, and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) remain limited. A paired-field design with high-frequency soil moisture monitoring was used to quantify water yield, dissolved nitrogen, phosphorus, and Escherichia coli (E. coli) over seven and eight water years, and ARGs (tetM, tetW, ermB, sul1) over two years in southern Michigan. Soil moisture at tile depth (~75 cm) was higher under controlled drainage, confirming that DWM increases field water-holding capacity. Compared to the free drainage field, DWM reduced cumulative tile discharge by 43% and annual nutrient yields by 46-83% for nitrate and 12-82% for soluble reactive phosphorus, but effects on ammonium were variable. Average daily nutrient yields declined by ~50% over the study period, driven primarily by managed periods. Nutrient concentrations did not differ between treatments, indicating that yield reductions resulted from decreased water loss. Mean daily E. coli yields declined by 71% over the study period, and concentrations were 46% lower under controlled drainage. Controlled drainage reduced tetM and sul1 ARG concentrations and yields during managed periods and throughout the study; however, sensitivity analyses showed that these effects were strongly influenced by a high-precipitation event. After excluding the event, differences in ARG concentrations were no longer detected, although ARG yields remained 43% lower during managed periods. These findings highlight the potential for DWM to mitigate nutrient, microbial, and antibiotic resistance transport from agricultural drainage systems.

Agricultural intensification is a major cause of population declines in farmland birds and insects worldwide. While these declines are expected to disrupt trophic interactions through density-dependent cascading effects, examples outside of crop pest control or involving more than two trophic levels remain poorly documented. Here we quantify such cascading effects across three trophic levels involving a declining aerial insectivore, the Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor), which breeding success decreases with agricultural intensity, Protocalliphora bird blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) that parasitize its nestlings, and Nasonia parasitoid jewel wasps (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) that feed upon blowfly pupae within swallow nests. Agriculture intensity may affect each of these actors either directly via, for instance, toxicological effects from pesticide use, or indirectly through density-dependent trophic interactions, which can exacerbate or mitigate one another. Using Bayesian models within a causal inference framework, we quantified how nestling host density, meteorological conditions, and agricultural landscape context affect Nasonia parasitoid infestation of Protocalliphora pupae, and estimated Protocalliphora emergence success. Analyses were based on 3,340 Protocalliphora puparia collected from 248 Tree Swallow nests over a 16-year period (2004-2019) across a 10,200-km2 agricultural intensity gradient in Southern Quebec, Canada. Model predictions indicated that Protocalliphora emergence probability increased steeply with nestling host availability (i.e., nestling-days). Whereas Nasonia parasitoid infestation occurrence at the nest level increased with Protocalliphora host availability, the proportion of infested Protocalliphora pupae within nest decreased and led to a dilution effect at the individual level. Although Protocalliphora abundance within nests decreased with agricultural intensity, their emergence probability peaked in agrointensive landscapes. This increase was associated with reduced Nasonia infestation rates, suggesting that agricultural intensity indirectly mitigated parasitoid pressure on Protocalliphora host populations. Our results highlight how agricultural intensification can shape multitrophic interactions and life-history traits (emergence success and infestation rates) by simultaneously reducing host availability and weakening top-down control by parasitoids.

Globally, contaminated soils pose serious risks to agriculture, biodiversity of ecosystems, and human health. Although a variety of monitoring and remediation methods have been developed over the years, there remains a lack of theoretical modelling to better understand the impact of contamination on soil carbon in a microbially-mediated system. In this study, we develop a model which incorporates contaminated soil organic carbon, uncontaminated soil organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, microbes, extracellular enzymes, and CO2, to explore how different amounts of contamination and modes of contamination (pulse and press) affect microbially-mediated carbon flux within both vegetated and barren environments. The model represents contamination as a pool of contaminated soil organic carbon that is more resistant to microbial degradation than uncontaminated soil organic carbon. The results show that, in barren environments, the amount and type of contamination has no notable impact on the soil system. In contrast to this, in vegetated environments, plants mitigate the impact of large contamination inputs with differences in outcome depending on the amount and type of contamination.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers enhance maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) productivity but impose substantial environmental and economic costs. Some Mexican maize landraces support biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in aerial root mucilage, raising the question of how much variation exists in this trait and how domestication, geographic spread, and improvement have shaped BNF-related traits across Zea in the Americas. We evaluated aerial root traits and BNF capacity across the maize domestication continuum using 60 Zea accessions grown in field experiments over two years under low-N conditions. Some accessions of wild Zea, landraces from Mexico and South America, and improved varieties had elevated nitrogen derived from the atmosphere (%Ndfa), ranging from 20 to 40%; some of these also had greater %Ndfa than typical improved varieties. Spread and improvement appear to have significantly reduced the number of aerial root-bearing nodes, with wild Zea and Mexican landraces consistently producing more. Nevertheless, the proportion of nitrogen derived from the atmosphere (%Ndfa) does not vary systematically across the domestication continuum. Thus, crop evolution shaped aerial root phenotypes more than associative BNF capacity. The persistence of substantial within-group variation indicates that the genetic potential for enhanced BNF remains within the Zea gene pool, providing opportunities to encourage and improve nitrogen use efficiency in maize cropping systems.

Extensive green roofs are an important component of urban green infrastructure. However, harsh rooftop conditions, including shallow substrates, high temperatures and limited water availability, considerably restrict plant selection. Although extensive green roofs are traditionally dominated by succulent species, increasing attention has been directed towards annual plants because of their rapid establishment, developmental plasticity and potential contribution to vegetation diversity. This review aimed to identify annual plant species introduced on extensive green roofs and to characterize the functional traits most frequently associated with their establishment under rooftop conditions. In addition, the review examined the geographical distribution and methodological characteristics of existing studies and identified species with potential for application under temperate climatic conditions. A total of 22 studies published between 2015 and 2025 were analyzed, comprising 100 annual species representing 29 plant families. The reviewed studies showed a clear geographical bias towards Mediterranean and arid regions, whereas temperate climates were considerably underrepresented. Among species occurring in Central Europe, ruderal life strategies, drought avoidance, efficient dispersal mechanisms, low plant height and prolonged flowering were the most frequently observed functional characteristics, while seed mass and specific leaf area (SLA) exhibited substantial interspecific variation. These findings suggest that functional traits, rather than taxonomic affiliation alone, provide a useful framework for selecting annual species for extensive green roofs. The review also highlights the need for long-term studies conducted under temperate climatic conditions to improve evidence-based plant selection and support the development of resilient and multifunctional green roof vegetation.

1. Soil invertebrate biomass is closely linked to ecosystem processes, yet its routine quantification remains constrained by the effort required to weigh large numbers of small individuals. Length-mass relationships provide an indirect alternative, but body length can be difficult to standardise and extract automatically from images of curved, coiled or contracted organisms. Projected body area may provide a more tractable image-derived predictor, but its performance across diverse soil-faunal taxa and at the community scale remains insufficiently evaluated. 2. Here, we developed a framework using projected body area and contour length to estimate fresh and dry mass from measurements of 1,792 soil invertebrates representing 15 higher-level taxa. We fitted taxon-specific models for six well-represented groups and general models across taxa, and evaluated predictive performance using leave-one-out cross-validation. We then assessed cross-dataset transferability by comparing our data with those of Lemoine et al. (2026) and pooled the two datasets to derive combined models. Finally, we tested whether individual predictions could be scaled to independently measured community biomass. 3. Taxon-specific models generally reduced prediction error relative to general models, with mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values of 6.9-37.3% for fresh mass and 7.6-30.2% for dry mass. General models retained MAPEs of 27.2% and 22.4%, respectively. Comparisons of our dataset with that of Lemoine et al. (2026) showed no detectable differences in six of eight taxon-by-mass slopes. Although intercepts frequently differed, no overall dataset effect was detected after accounting for taxa. Pooling both datasets broadened model development, while taxon-specific models generally retained lower error than the combined general model. Finally, community-level predictions tracked measured biomass across all model sets (R2 = 0.87-0.99), but absolute error varied among models and faunal groups (MAPE = 9.6-52.5%). 4. Body area and contour length extracted from images therefore provide a practical basis for scaling soil invertebrate biomass estimation from individuals to communities. Integration with automated imaging and segmentation tools such as flatbug, BIODISCOVER and CollembolAI could extend soil invertebrate monitoring at larger scales beyond abundance and taxonomic composition to biomass, while providing scalable inputs for analyses of food webs and general ecosystem ecology.

Mediterranean forests are emerging as one of the clearest hotspots of climate-change impacts, where rapid warming and increasingly severe droughts and heatwaves are pushing forest ecosystems toward their physiological and functional limits. These pressures threaten productivity, carbon dynamics, ecosystem stability, and the services forests provide. In this context, a process-based forest ecosystem model was used to assess climate-driven changes in carbon dynamics and productivity stability across Italian forests within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) framework. 5135 plots were simulated, corresponding to ~80% of the field plots included in the second Italian National Forest Inventory (INFI). Model simulations were first evaluated against independent observations of gross primary production (GPP) from satellite-based products and forest carbon variables from the third INFI. Forest dynamics from 2015 to 2100 were simulated under three CMIP6-based emission scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) using two climate forcings (GFDL-ESM4 and UKESM1-0-LL). Future responses were assessed for GPP, aboveground biomass, growing stock volume, and carbon stocks, while variability in GPP was quantified using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of forest stability. Results show that the model reproduced the main spatial and temporal patterns of forest productivity and carbon stocks. Future projections revealed strong spatial heterogeneity and increasing divergence among scenarios after mid-century. GPP showed the earliest and strongest response to climate change, with mountain forests generally maintaining or increasing productivity and exhibiting greater stability, whereas coastal forests showed pronounced productivity declines and increasing variability, particularly under higher-emission scenarios and more extreme climate forcing. In contrast, carbon stocks generally continued to increase throughout the century, although carbon accumulation progressively slowed toward the end of the century, particularly under higher-emission scenarios.