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The impact of genetically modified crops on bird diversity

Nature Sustainability (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Biodiversity provides essential ecosystem services to agriculture, including pest control and pollination, yet it is declining at an alarming rate, largely due to the agricultural sector. The introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in the United States marked a major transformation of agricultural production, as over 90% of US corn, soybean and cotton areas are now planted with GM varieties. This shift in crop cultivation has substantially altered crop management practices, most notably the types and quantities of pesticides used. Despite the magnitude of these changes, the impact on biodiversity is still poorly understood. Here we estimate the causal impact of GM crops on bird diversity in the United States and compare bird communities through time in areas with different levels of exposure to GM crops. We find that insectivorous birds benefit from GM crop adoption and that this benefit is largest in cotton. In contrast, herbivorous birds weakly decrease with GM crop adoption. Thus, while GM crop adoption has a small positive effect on overall abundance of birds, the effect is heterogeneous across species groups, with potentially important consequences for bird community composition and associated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes.

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Fig. 1: Adoption rates of GM (all traits combined) corn, cotton and soy varieties as shares of planted acreage.
Fig. 2: Distribution of corn, soy and cotton exposure of BBS routes.
Fig. 3: Overall effect of GM crops on all, insectivorous and herbivorous birds.
Fig. 4: Dynamic overall effect of GM crops on all, insectivorous and herbivorous birds.
Fig. 5: Effect of GM corn, soy and cotton on all insectivorous and herbivorous birds.
Fig. 6: Distribution of BBS routes across the United States.

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Data availability

All data are available on figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25421137 (ref. 39).

Code availability

All code (for R 4.2.2) is available on figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25421137 (ref. 39).

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. M’Gonigle, R. Sargent and J. Gantois for their collaboration and advice throughout the project; the participants of the Food and Resource Economics seminar at the University of British Columbia and the TWEEDS conference 2023 in Portland, Oregon, for their valuable feedback. F.N. acknowledges funding from the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) Insight Grant ‘The Biodiversity Impact of New Crop Technologies’ (AWD-021156) and the Canada Research Chairs Program (Canada Research Chair in Economic and Environmental Interactions). A.L. acknowledges funding from the US National Science Foundation under Grant DEB-2042526. D.E. acknowledges funding from the Werner and Hildegard Hesse Fellowship in Ornithology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Dennis Engist, Trevor Church & Frederik Noack

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Laura Melissa Guzman

  3. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Ashley Larsen

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  1. Dennis Engist
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Contributions

D.E. conceived the empirical strategy, assembled the data, ran the estimations and wrote the manuscript. L.M.G. and A.L. provided feedback and advice on the empirical strategy and edited the manuscript. T.C. provided feedback on pesticide toxicity data and advice on the mechanism section. F.N. provided funding, conceived the project idea and supervised the project, contributed to the empirical strategy and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dennis Engist.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Matthew Etterson, Ruiqing Miao, Pierre Mineau and John Tooker for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs.1.1–25.2, Tables 3.1–22.2 and Discussion of Mechanisms.

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Engist, D., Guzman, L.M., Larsen, A. et al. The impact of genetically modified crops on bird diversity. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01390-y

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