a specialist-generalist classification of the arable flora and its response to changes in agricultural practicesspecialist-generalist耕种植物分类及其变化在农业实践.pdfVIP

Fried et al. BMC Ecology 2010, 10:20 /1472-6785/10/20 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access A specialist-generalist classification of the arable flora and its response to changes in agricultural practices 1,2 1 1* Guillaume Fried , Sandrine Petit , Xavier Reboud Abstract Background: Theory in ecology points out the potential link between the degree of specialisation of organisms and their responses to disturbances and suggests that this could be a key element for understanding the assembly of communities. We evaluated this question for the arable weed flora as this group has scarcely been the focus of ecological studies so far and because weeds are restricted to habitats characterised by very high degrees of disturbance. As such, weeds offer a case study to ask how specialization relates to abundance and distribution of species in relation to the varying disturbance regimes occurring in arable crops. Results: We used data derived from an extensive national monitoring network of approximately 700 arable fields scattered across France to quantify the degree of specialisation of 152 weed species using six different ecological methods. We then explored the impact of the level of disturbance occurring in arable fields by comparing the degree of specialisation of weed communities in contrasting field situations. The classification of species as specialist or generalist was consistent between different ecological indices. When applied on a large-scale data set across France, this classification highlighted that monoculture harbour significantly more specialists than crop rotations, suggesting that crop rotation increases abundance of generalist species rather than sets of species that are each specialised to the individual crop types grown in the rotation. Applied to