2007). In contrast, most agri-environmental schemes last only for a limited number of years (Kleijn et al. 2006), a situation that needs to be changed if better conservation results are to be achieved. However, old margins where no plant biomass is removed provide habitat for many herbivores and may also lead to less https://www.selleckchem.com/products/nvp-bsk805.html suitable situations for predators. To benefit farmers, then, these margins need to be managed differently. Since scarification,

in particular, can be detrimental to many soil and ground-dwelling organisms (Smith et al. 2008b), re-establishing margins will not be the best option. An alternative is to introduce a hay-making management regime, with the vegetation being cut once a year, for example (Hovd and Skogen 2005; De Cauwer et al. 2005; Manhoudt et al. 2007). Margins can then still be established to last for a long time, but with plant biomass now being selleck chemicals removed and vegetation succession set-back, thus providing less suitable conditions for high herbivore abundances while probably promoting predators. In addition, margins managed for hay-making will have fewer noxious weeds (De Cauwer et al. 2008), but greater plant diversity (Schaffers 2002; Musters et al. 2009; Blomqvist et al. 2009), which might in turn permit higher invertebrate diversity (Thomas and Marshall 1999; Asteraki et al. 2004) and more flower-visiting insects (Noordijk et al. 2009).

The actual effect of hay-making on invertebrate species richness in arable field margins needs further study. As the possibilities for overwintering invertebrates increases with vegetation cover in winter, in the case p38 MAPK pathway of a

hay-making EGFR inhibitor management regime we recommend mowing the margins not too late in autumn (and preferably in late summer), permitting a certain amount of subsequent re-growth and thus providing sufficient overwintering opportunities. Acknowledgements We are indebted to E. Gertenaar and R. van der Poll for assistance during the fieldwork and invertebrate counting and to A.M. Lokhorst and H. Staats for input in the study design. In addition, we would like to thank all the representatives of the participating farmer collectives and all the individual farmers for their efforts in contributing to this research and allowing us to perform the field sampling. We are also grateful to N. Harle for his correction of the English. This study was financially supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Grant No. 474-03-385. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. References Asteraki EJ, Hart BJ, Ings TC, Manley WJ (2004) Factors influencing the plant and invertebrate diversity of arable field margins.