Indirect effects dominate ecosystem service losses in response to agricultural intensification

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Feeding a growing human population while preventing biodiversity loss is a major challenge. Land conversion impacts multiple ecosystem services (ESs), including food production and biodiversity-dependent services; yet, the role of indirect effects on ESs within this context, such as parasitoids boosting crop yield by controlling herbivores, remains poorly understood. Using species-network data from an organic agroecosystem with multiple habitats, we simulated the effects of converting extensive to intensive crop production on multiple ESs. Projected land conversion increased crop yield by up to 191% but severely reduced other ESs (e.g., pollination by 95%). However, indirect effects on ES-providing species declined by 97%, revealing undescribed effects of habitat conversion. Comparison to a null model showed that the identity of species lost either mitigates or amplifies these effects, depending on the ES type. Uncovering how land-use changes shape direct and indirect interplay among multiple services is crucial for sustainable agroecosystem management. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2F33T Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences biodiversity, Food production, habitat conversion, land-use change, network analysis, Indirect ecosystem services provision, Species Interactions Published: 2025-03-06 04:00 CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: None Data and Code Availability Statement: The raw data were taken from Pocock et al., 2012 (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1214915). The full raw and processed data, as well as code, are available on the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/Ecological-Complexity-Lab/Norwood_farm Language: English