Legacy of landscape crop diversity enhances carabid beetle species richness and promotes granivores

It is well understood that agricultural expansion and associated loss of semi-natural habitat in the landscape are major drivers for marked decline biodiversity. While conserving remaining patches essential to reverse ongoing biodiversity declines, increasing focus has also been put on diversifying cropland itself by crop diversity as a measure compositional heterogeneity, reducing field sizes configurational heterogeneity. Both these diversification approaches have shown promise enhance year sampling, but it unknown whether legacies promote building up arthropod communities over time. We selected 14 faba bean fields landscapes dominated cropland. The were chosen along three gradients: sampling (2017), previous (2016) mean size landscapes. Using pitfall traps, we show carabid beetle species richness higher with year. Especially, granivorous beetles benefitted from diversity. Rove more abundant genus rich larger sizes, while spiders not responding any variables. A crops their weed could provide diverse food resources shelter habitats, which build populations There need explore effects agri-environmental schemes across multiple years better understand legacy effects, structure sustainable