Violeta Hevia

• PhD in Ecology
• Professor (Assistant) at Autonomous University of Madrid

Amphibians face global population declines due to environmental degradation and habitat loss, particularly impacting breeding water bodies. Thus, we hypothesise that water bodies associated with traditional pastoralist practices, such as those along drove roads used for transhumance (e.g. ponds and troughs), may play a crucial role in supporting am...

Context: The agricultural intensification due to global increased food demand has harmed pollinator communities worldwide. However, some of the economically most important oilseed crops, such as the sunflower, depend on pollinators to produce seeds. While self-fertile varieties have undergone genetic selection to guarantee productivity , the pollin...

Global pollinator decline urgently requires effective methods to assess their trends, distribution and behaviour. Passive acoustics is a non-invasive and cost-efficient monitoring tool increasingly employed for monitoring animal communities. However, insect sounds remain highly unexplored, hindering the application of this technique for pollinators...

Grassland soils, beyond their role as biodiversity reservoirs, actively contribute to the provision of numerous ecosystem services. In the Iberian Peninsula, drove roads, the traditional routes used for seasonal livestock movements in search of the most productive pastures, play a key role in the preservation of semi-natural grasslands and in the p...

Ecological intensification has been embraced with great interest by the academic sector but is still rarely taken up by farmers because monitoring the state of different ecological functions is not straightforward. Modelling tools can represent a more accessible alternative of measuring ecological functions, which could help promote their use among...

Context Drove roads are landscape corridors traditionally used for livestock movement in many regions of the world, including Spain, where they cover about 0.8% of the land. They have ecological importance due to their role in connectivity, seed dispersal, soil preservation, habitat and biodiversity conservation, and the provision of ecosystem serv...

How farms and the surrounding landscape are managed locally substantially affects biodiversity, with consequent impacts on the supply of certain ecosystem services, such as pollination. Wild bees provide pollination services for small-scale horticultural farming, and are key to determining and improving farm production, as well as maintaining ecosy...

En base a la investigación Biodiversidad, economía y empleo en España. Análisis y perspectivas de futuro (Oteros et al, 2022), nos centramos en las dimensiones de cambio de modelo productivo y, especialmente, en las ocupaciones y en el empleo, respetuosas con la biodiversidad. El objetivo consiste en: a) Examinar la inversión, gasto y tipo de actua...

In the context of global change, social-ecological perspectives for organisations and territorial planning schemes are key to facilitate a transition towards sustainability. Consequently, Ecosystem Services (ES) assessment and mapping are being increasingly used to enhance knowledge co-production for more sustainable territorial management. Higher...

The installation of flower strips in simplified agricultural landscapes has been promoted as a tool to improve pollination services. While the effectiveness of flower strips in increasing pollinator visitation and yield is well-established, the social and economic feasibility of this measure remains unclear. Here, we evaluated the economic efficien...

Agricultural intensification has strongly impacted ecosystems and accelerated the process of global change. Consequently, agroecological practices are being increasingly adopted. Agroecological practices are biodiversity-based solutions that aim to generate sustainable and resilient agroecosystems, which could enhance the supply of ecosystem servic...

Temperate grasslands are part of one of the biggest biomes on earth, sustaining high levels of biodiversity and providing multiple ecosystem services. However, the area covered by this open ecosystem is decreasing worldwide, due to several threats like land use change or climate change. Ground-dwelling arthropods are an important group of the commu...

Intensification of agricultural landscapes to fulfil increased global food demands has dramatically impacted biodiversity and ecosystem services. Several pollinator groups, which are vital for the maintenance of pollinator‐dependent crops, have been severely affected by this intensification process. Management tools, such as the implementation of a...

Our eco-dependence urgently requires us to reconsider the reorganization of social and economic processes so that economic activities and employment, which are the main sources of income for the working majority, can be compatible with the limits and functionality of ecosystems and can have the sustenance and reproduction of life as their central o...

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop y...

Installing patches of flowering plants is a commonly used strategy to enhance refuge and food resources for pollinators in intensive agricultural landscapes. Here, we evaluated how floral strips and semi-natural habitats impact the taxonomic and functional diversity of wild bees in intensively farmed sunflower fields. Pan traps were used to assess...

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) aims at reversing the negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Landscape context may modulate, and even constraint, AES effectiveness. We evaluate AES effectiveness on ant abundance, diversity and community composition. Ants are...

Niche overlap and breadth are fundamental characteristics of ecological niches that have been hypothesized to relate both to environmental conditions and to biotic interactions within a community. Abiotic factors and interspecific competition may have opposing effects on those niche characteristics by respectively filtering out species from the nic...

Pollinator conservation has become a key challenge to achieve sustainable agricultural landscapes and safeguard food supplies. Considering the potential negative effects of pollinator decline, international efforts have been developed to promote agri-environmental measures and pollinator-friendly management practices. However, little effort has bee...

La influencia y legitimidad social del conocimiento científico están decreciendo globalmente. Una de las razones es la falta de interacción y comu-nicación entre los ámbitos de la ciencia, la gestión y las poblaciones locales o la sociedad en su conjunto. En los ámbitos de las políticas de soste-nibilidad y la crisis socioecológica global, esto rep...

Background The study of biodiversity spatial patterns along ecological gradients can serve to elucidate factors shaping biological community structure and predict ecosystem responses to global change. Ant assemblages are particularly interesting as study cases, because ant species play a key role in many ecosystem processes and have frequently been...

Nestedness indices for dry grassland ant assemblages in surveys from all study areas in central Spain. Guadarrama range (-G2014- year 2014: 18 grasslands, 35 species; -G2015- year 2015: 6 grasslands, 26 species) and Serrota range (-S2015- year 2015: 6 grasslands, 20 species). Indices are Nestedness metric based on Overlap and Decreasing Fill (NODF)...

Relationships between temperature and elevation. Linear regressions between elevation and mean annual (air) temperature (top left, R2 = 94%), maximum (soil) temperature (top right, R2 = 80%), minimum (soil) temperature (bottom left, R2 = 96%), and mean annual rainfall (bottom right, R2 = 91%). Regressions built for Guadarrama 2014 data (n = 18 site...

Multiple-site dissimilarities of beta diversity. Multiple-site dissimilarities accounting for the spatial turnover (βSIM) and the nestedness components (βNES) of beta diversity, and sum of both values (βSOR) for dry grassland ant assemblages in all study areas in central Spain. G2014: Guadarrama range 2014; G2015: Guadarrama range 2015; S2015: Serr...

Temporal validation of the relationship between nestedness and elevation. Generalized additive model (GAM) of nestedness ranks (based on nestedness temperature index) on elevation in ant assemblages from Guadarrama range (central Spain) fit to Guadarrama 2014 data and validated with Guadarrama 2015 data. (TIF)

Ant species occurrences and environmental characteristics of sampling plots. IDPlot: plot identification. Survey: G2014 for Guadarrama range in 2014, G2015 for Guadarrama range in 2015 and S2015 for Serrota range in 2015. For each sampling plot we give the elevation (in m), latitude and longitude (UTM, datum European 1950), mean annual rainfall (Me...

Spatial validation of the relationship between nestedness and elevation. Generalized additive model (GAM) of nestedness ranks (based on nestedness temperature index) on elevation in ant assemblages from Guadarrama range (central Spain) fit to Guadarrama 2014 data and validated with Serrota 2015 data. (TIF)

1. Agricultural intensification is one of the major drivers behind biodiversity loss in Mediterranean agroecosystems. The intensification of olive groves as monoculture in large areas of the southern Spain have had important effects on biodiversity and ecological processes. 2. We explore the olive grove soil management practices effects on taxonomi...

The study of biodiversity spatial patterns along ecological gradients can serve to elucidate factors shaping biological community structure and predict ecosystem responses to global change. Ant assemblages are particularly interesting as study cases, because ant species play a key role in many ecosystem processes and have frequently been identified...

We aimed to identify priority research questions in the field of biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainability (BESS), based on a workshop held during the NRG BESS Conference for Early Career Researchers on BESS, and to compare these to existing horizon scanning exercises. This work highlights the need for improved data availability through c...

Understanding the responses of biodiversity to drivers of change and the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem properties and ecosystem services is a key challenge in the context of global environmental change. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the scientific literature linking direct drivers of change and ecosystem services via...

Natural and semi-natural habitats within agricultural landscapes provide food and nesting resources for wild bees, thus promoting crop pollination services. In central Spain, a large network of drove roads (DRs) crosses extensive areas of intensive agricultural fields. DRs are tracks (20–75 m wide) with semi-natural vegetation, protected for their...

Land-use change is the major driver of biodiversity loss. However, taxonomic diversity (TD) and functional diversity (FD) might respond differently to land-use change, and this response might also vary depending on the biotic group being analysed. In this study, we compare the TD and FD of four biotic groups (ants, birds, herbaceous, woody vegetati...

El patrón de distribución biogeográfica de un conjunto de especies puede ser útil para conocer cómo interactúan entre ellas y con el ambiente, así como para anticipar cómo les afectarán cambios futuros como los climáticos. En concreto, el patrón altitudinal de las comunidades de hormigas en pastizales de la Sierra de Guadarrama permite conocer mejo...

Drove roads are a major feature of Mediterranean countries, where this livestock management system has been practiced for centuries. In Spain, many drove roads have become completely or partially abandoned by herders, and transformed for other land uses. Yet, some major drove roads continue to be used for the passage of livestock, and might exert i...

Resumen En este trabajo se evalúa el estado de conservación de la Cañada Real Conquense (CRC) y se analizan los distintos factores de tipo natural y antrópico que influyen en la calidad de la misma para el uso ganadero. Para ello se midieron siete variables en un total de 370 puntos de muestreo, distribuidos cada kilómetro a lo largo de la cañada,...