Commentary: Forest Cover Is Critical for Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Livestock-Dominated Landscapes

Abstract

Balancing meat production and biodiversity conservation is a major challenge. To address this challenge, we must understand the independent effects of land-use change and production practices on biodiversity across spatial scales. A key question is whether biodiversity will benefit more from habitats embedded in farmland (“land sharing”) or preserved elsewhere (“land sparing”). Our multiscale assessment of dung beetle communities in livestock-dominated landscapes from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, supports the latter strategy. New results from phylogenetic analyses and unpublished results from dung removal experiments also highlight the importance of forest cover for preserving dung beetles and their key ecological roles. Both landscape-scale forest cover and macrocyclic lactones (commonly used veterinary drugs) shape dung beetle communities in the Yucatan Peninsula, thus suggesting that a land sparing approach, which maximizes forest protection, may minimize the damage of beef production to biodiversity. However, maximizing yields through macrocyclic lactone use will likely reduce on-farm ecosystem service provision. These surprising results have important implications for the conservation of biodiversity and ecological functions, as they suggest that the best strategies for conserving biodiversity may differ from those focused on delivering ecosystem services. We must therefore consider factors other than just food production and biodiversity conservation when designing land-use strategies.