The importance of field margins and meadows for land snails

Abstract

Field margins and meadows are valuable habitats for many species in agricultural landscapes but so far there are no comprehensive studies that address their value for land snails, which are an important part of terrestrial biodiversity.Even though the population trends of 74.6 % of the German land snail species that also should inhabit cultivatedland according to their ecological preferences are decreasing, it has never been investigated what value differentagricultural landscapeelements could have for this group. Therefore, we sampled and compared the land snail faunabetween field margins of different width and in-field areas of conventionally managed apple orchards, vineyards andcereal fields as well as between agricultural habitats and meadows to investigate their respective value for land snailbiodiversity in the agricultural landscape.In total we collected 20 different land snail species mostly typical of an open landscape representing ca. 16 % ofthe land snail fauna in Germany. In meadows species richness was higher than in all crop fields and margins exceptfor vineyard margins and wide cereal field margins and furthermore the typically occurring species differed considerablyfrom those in agricultural habitats. Our results did not indicate differences in land snail species richness,abundance or species composition between apple orchard in-field areas and field margins. In vineyardsand cerealfields, species richness was higher in margins than in-field and the red-list species Truncatellina cylindrica (Férussac,1807) was exclusively typical in wide margins of both crops. Land snail abundance and/or species richness increasedwith decreasing agricultural intensity.Quelle: Mainzer Naturwissenschaftliches Archiv : unter Foerderung des Minist. fuer Unterricht und Kultus u. der Stadt Mainz in Verb. mit dem Inst. fuer Bio- und Geowissenschaften der Univ. Mainz - (2013), H. 50, S. 291-300.