Editorial: Habitat Modification and Landscape Fragmentation in Agricultural Ecosystems: Implications for Biodiversity and Landscape Multi-Functionality

Biodiversity is the basis of several important ecosystem functions, which guarantee the provision of irreplaceable Nature’s contribution to people, for example food production. Long-term maintenance of such functions and services in agricultural ecosystems thus depend on the maintenance of the biodiversity of agro-ecosystems (Foley et al., 2005; Tomlinson, 2013). Biodiversity loss is therefore a major global environmental problem, with habitat deterioration being one of the main drivers (Tilman, 2001; Brook et al., 2008). As habitat loss is one consequence of agricultural intensification (Benton et al., 2003), and agricultural ecosystems comprise 40% of Earth’s land ecosystems (FAO, 2021), agriculture plays a critical role for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning at large. However, the influence of habitat loss, fragmentation and modifications in agricultural ecosystems on biodiversity and ecosystem functions is still hard to disentangle from that of other mechanisms. For some taxa or ecosystem services (e.g., pollinators and pollination), landscape and habitat modification have been shown to be important, e.g., as increasing habitat fragmentation or crop isolation from natural areas decrease pollination services (Ricketts et al., 2008; Farwig et al., 2009; Garibaldi et al., 2009, 2011).Peer reviewe