Landscape population genetics and the role of organic farming

Summary in the original language of the document

This project aims at understanding the effect of different farming systems on the genetic diversity of common agricultural species. It is well known that organic farming generally improves the biodiversity and abundance of species in the agricultural landscape (Hole et al., 2005). A reduction in species number and abundance has been shown as a result of the intensification of farming suggesting a relationship between farming intensity and species abundance (e.g. Stoate et al., 2001). Anyway, none of the studies that investigated the effects of pesticides presence and farming intensity has investigated the effect
on the genetic diversity and isolation of the populations.
It has been shown that, despite the theoretical expectations, also very abundant species like Abax parallelepipedus can be divided in isolated and genetically distinct populations within very few years in response to human activity (e.g. construction of streets: Keller et al., 2004). Therefore, we chose two common agricultural species (field vole, Microtus agrestis, and a non-pest ground beetle, Bembidion lampros) belonging to different taxa and with different dispersal abilities, to
investigate the effect of pesticide use and intensiveness of farming on their genetic structuring and diversity.