Toward more concern for specialisation and less for species diversity in conserving farmland biodiversity

In order to face the large and worrying biodiversity decline in agricultural landscapes, important policy instruments like agri-environmental schemes (AES) have been implemented. Studies that have examined the ecological effects of AES are now numerous and generally use indicators of biodiversity such as species richness and diversity as well as species abundance. Yet, it has been shown that simple metrics such as species richness or abundance may give misleading messages about biodiversity status and fate. Moreover, those indicators cannot detect another important source of biodiversity loss, biotic homogenisation. In this context, taking into account to a wider extent ecological difference among species would be more relevant, as well as focusing on the species specialisation which is known to be linked to higher species vulnerability. A bibliographic review investigating the criteria generally used to assess the success of AES showed that 55% of studies used species richness and/or abundance exclusively without any consideration of specialisation or other ecological traits in their evaluation of AES effectiveness. Based on data from the French breeding bird survey and studies at regional scale in France on farmland birds, we show that: (i) species richness and specialisation are generally negatively correlated in agricultural areas, (ii) habitat heterogeneity does not benefit specialist species, and (iii) monitoring of species diversity should be coupled with the monitoring of specialist species to improve conservation strategies in farming systems. Overall, this study emphasizes the need to account for both community richness and composition when assessing AES or similar conservation planning.