Habitat Evaluation and Assessment of Valuable Ecosystem services in Non-crop areas (HEAVEN)

• Applicant: Dr. Marco Ferrante
• Subject Area: Ecology of Land Use
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555056945

Protecting natural habitats is a common target in several regional policies, aligning with global commitments to protect at least 30% of land and marine ecosystems. Natural and semi-natural habitats within agricultural landscapes (i.e., non-crop habitats) play a crucial role by supporting beneficial species that provide ecosystem services paramount for productive and sustainable agricultural systems. This project aims to investigate the role of non-crop habitats in supporting insect communities and ecosystem services. We focus on carabids as a target group because they are one of the most abundant and diverse taxa in temperate agricultural systems, contributing significantly to the biological control of insect pests and weed seeds. Moreover, we aim to further develop widespread monitoring tools to quantify ecosystem services provided by carabids and other beneficial taxa. The project will assess the importance of different non-crop habitats (i.e., hedgerows, flower patches, grass margins, grasslands) for carabid functional diversity by: simulating the vulnerability of carabid communities to species loss resulting from habitat loss (WP1), highlighting carabid use of non-crop habitats throughout the year, including the understudied winter period (WP2), exploring the link between habitat type and the nutritional status of a common carabid species (WP3), investigating how habitat type and nutritional status affect biological control of insect pests and weed seeds (WP4), and advancing the use of tools to monitor carabid predatory activity in agricultural systems (WP5). By combining simulation modeling with field and laboratory experiments, this project will contribute to determining which habitats are necessary to support functional carabid communities and ecosystem services, understanding how carabids use different non-crop habitats across seasons, and identifying the role of different non-crop habitats as source of macronutrients for carabids. The ultimate goals of this research are to facilitate the conservation and management of non-crop habitats in agricultural landscapes and to strengthen our ability to design functional and resilient agricultural landscapes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants