Traits drive responses of aphidophagous coccinellid communities to landscape complexity

Abstract Coccinellids are important biocontrol agents which are threatened by agricultural intensification and landscape change. Their responses to the landscape are inconsistent which may be due to a taxonomic focus of studies that misses the traits that drive the differences in species responses to the landscape. In this study, we investigated how coccinellids in alfalfa respond to environmental variables in terms of their traits. We examined five traits: body size, activity period, habitat specialization, spatial ubiquity and dispersal habits, and analysed how single and multiple traits (syndromes) are affected by local variables (aphid density), and landscape compositional (diversity of land uses) and configurational heterogeneity (edge density), at two spatial scales (500 and 1500 m). The community‐weighted mean of all traits, except body size, was affected by landscape heterogeneity, mostly at the smaller spatial scale. Coccinellid communities break into two groups of trait syndromes in their response to landscape heterogeneity. Smaller species, uncommon in alfalfa, mostly native, were negatively associated with compositional and configurational heterogeneity at both spatial scales, while the remaining species were associated with increased landscape heterogeneity. This latter group of species splits into two groups at the smaller spatial scale, composed by large exotic and natives, distributed along a gradient of landscape configurational heterogeneity. The response of ladybeetles to landscape composition and configuration depends more on their traits than on their origin (native vs. exotics). These responses should be considered when designing policies for agricultural landscape management, depending on the conservation aims.