Monitoring the consequences of the use of agro-chemicals on common biodiversity in French farmlands
Alexandre Villers  1, 2, *@  , Camila Andrade  3@  , Guillaume Fried  4@  , Daniel Cluzeau  5@  , Olivier Pillon  6@  , Romain Julliard  3@  , Gérard Balent  7@  , Marie Carles  7@  , Francois Calatayud  7@  , David Sheeren  7@  , Jérôme Julien  8@  , Nicolas Lenne  8@  , Pascal Monestiez  1@  
1 : Biostatistique et Processus Spatiaux  (BIOSP)  -  Website
Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)
Site Agroparc Domaine St Paul 84914 Avignon cedex 9 -  France
2 : Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé  (CEBC)  -  Website
CNRS : UMR7372, Université de La Rochelle
CNRS UMR 7372 - 79360 VILLIERS-EN-BOIS -  France
3 : Centre d'écologie et de sciences de la conservation  (CESCO)  -  Website
CNRS : UMR7204, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) - Paris VI, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
55 rue Buffon 75005 PARIS -  France
4 : Laboratoire de la Santé des Végétaux  (LSV)
Anses
5 : Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution  (ECOBIO)
INEE, Universite de Rennes 1, CNRS : UMR6553, Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Rennes
Université de Rennes 1 - Station de Paimpont, France -  France
6 : Service Régional de la Protection des Végétaux
Ministère de l'Alimentation, de l'Agriculture et de la Pêche
Aube - Haute Marne -  France
7 : UMR 1201 Dynafor INRA -INP Toulouse  (Dynafor)  -  Website
Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)
INRA, 24 Chemin de Borde Rouge- Auzeville CS 52627 31326 Castanet Tolosan cedex -  France
8 : DGAL
Ministère de l'Alimentation, de l'Agriculture et de la Pêche
* : Corresponding author

Agricultural intensification has led to the generalised use of pesticides, a group of molecules that have been developed to control populations of organisms known as crop pests like some fungi, weeds, insects or mammals species. These compounds cover a large spectrum of uses and are designed to protect crops, and thus yields, against pest damages. It is however highly suspected that pesticides may also impact biodiversity, through their effects on non-targeted species, e.g. by directly decreasing survival of auxiliary fauna or by modifying the composition of ecological communities. Here we present a protocol that has been conducted for the past 4 years in France as an observatory of “common biodiversity”, and that aims at assessing the spatial and temporal consequences of the use of plant protection products on the ecological communities inhabiting French agro-ecosystems. Five hundred plots have been selected in farming regions across the country (80% in conventional agriculture and 20% in organic farming) and farming practices (sowing, tillage, chemicals treatments, etc.), local habitat characteristics (presence of hedges, roads, etc) as well as biodiversity (earthworms, plants, coleoptera and birds) have been monitored on a yearly basis. Parallel to this information available at a very local scale, we also aggregated different data sets describing pesticides uses and habitat characteristics (landscape composition) at a larger spatial scale. We aimed at testing the relative contribution of very local versus regional trends in pesticides use on birds' community (abundance and composition) while controlling for habitat characteristics.


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