Abstract Birds and bats are relevant natural enemies of pests in fruit crops. However, by preying also on arthropod natural enemies, they may act as intraguild predators that can lead to pest release. Disentangling how these two groups intervene in different ecological relationships is thus essential to understand their relative contribution and complementarity in pest control provision. We used dietary DNA metabarcoding to build tri‐trophic networks that account for direct and indirect interactions among top predators (birds and bats), mesopredators (spiders) and pests (insects) in apple and blueberry crops. To identify species closely linked to pests, we estimated modularity. To evaluate their topological and tri‐trophic role, we quantified their centrality and the extent of distinct predatory pathways in their diets (i.e. direct pest predation, intraguild predation or both). Finally, in the case of birds in apple crop, we tested if the topological and tri‐trophic role of species depended on their abundance, degree of insectivory and morphological traits. The network was modular in both crops, with birds and bats occupying distinct modules feeding on different prey. Bats tended to be more directly connected to pests than birds, which were more frequently involved in intraguild predation. Among birds in the apple crop, higher abundance increased direct pest predation, whereas greater insectivory favoured intraguild predation. Morphology further shaped topological position, with smaller species with less pointed wings demonstrating higher centrality values. Birds and bats showed different and complementary roles in pest control service, a pattern consistent among fruit crops. Both vertebrate groups were associated with different prey, and birds were more prone to promote pest release than bats, although such effect was weaker for common and less insectivorous species. Synthesis and applications . Our study highlights that by combining interaction networks, tri‐trophic cascades and species traits, we can better understand the role of species on the control of pests in fruit crops. In particular, our results point out that promoting bats and abundant birds may be an efficient strategy to enhance pest control in fruit orchards.

Gut microbiomes of holometabolous insects can be strongly affected by metamorphosis. Previous studies suggest that microbiome colonization and community development often rely on specialized transmission routes between host life stages. However, there is a lack of comparative studies of microbial community dynamics from different transmission mechanisms. We compared the gut microbial community dynamics across life stages in five Galerucella species that differ in their potential microbial transfer mechanism by sequencing amplicons of the 16S rRNA gene. Females of three of the studied species place a fecal string on top of the egg, which may enhance the transfer of gut microbes, whereas females of the two other species do not. We found that the α-diversity was more stable between life stages in fecal string-placer species compared with the non-fecal string-placer species. Moreover, there were consistent microbiome differences between species, with multiple taxa in each species consistently appearing in all life stages. Fecal strings placed on eggs seem to play an important role in the diversity and dynamics of gut bacteria in Galerucella species, facilitating the vertical transfer of gut bacteria between host insect generations. Alternative, but less efficient, transmission routes appear to occur in non-fecal string-placer species. IMPORTANCE:We explore the consequences of having different mechanisms for transferring and establishing the gut microbiome between generations on gut microbial community dynamics. This process is often problematic in holometabolous insects, which have a complete metamorphosis between larval and adult stages. In our previous research, we found that females of some species within the genus Galerucella (Chrysomelidae) place a fecal string on the eggs, which is later consumed by the hatching larvae, whereas other species in the same genus do not have this behavior. In this paper, we therefore quantify the microbial community dynamics across all life stages in five Galerucella beetles (three with and two without fecal strings). Our results also indicate that the dynamics are much more stable in the species with fecal strings, particularly in the early life stages.

Predation can be a great source of mortality for insect eggs. Thus, female insects use multiple strategies to reduce it. Two common strategies are to aggregate eggs, which may function to satiate egg predators, and various deterrence strategies, such as the addition of faecal strings on top of the egg. We tested the hypothesis that these two strategies work best in combination, where egg aggregation may strengthen the effect of deterrence strategies. We compared egg predation by the predator Paederus riparius both within the species Galerucella lineola (cleaned eggs versus eggs with faecal strings), and between the species G. lineola and G. sagittariae (where the latter species naturally lack faecal strings). Our findings revealed a robust treatment interaction, where faecal strings and egg density affected egg survival when exposed to Paederus riparius . Egg survival increased with egg density for eggs with faecal strings but was constantly low on eggs without faecal strings (cleaned G. lineola eggs or G. sagittariae eggs). This study emphasised that a combination of insect traits may be needed to defend insect eggs against their natural predators.

Parasitoid wasps are major causes of mortality of many species, making host immune defences a common target of adaptive evolution, though such targets outside model species are poorly understood. In this study, we used two tests of positive selection to compare across three closely related Galerucella leaf beetles that show substantial differences in their phenotypic response to the shared parasitoid wasp Asecodes parviclava, their main natural enemy. Using a codon-based test, which detects excess amino acid fixations per locus along each species’ lineage, we found more evidence of positive selection on parasitoid-relevant immune genes in the species with the strongest immunocompetence (G. pusilla) compared with the species having weaker immunocompetence (G. tenella and G. calmariensis). Moreover, genes coding for the early phases in the immune response cascade were predominantly among the positively selected immune genes, providing targets for future functional genomic study to pin-point connections between genotypic and phenotypic differences in defences towards a parasitoid wasp. In contrast, genome-wide analyses of the haplotype frequency spectrum, which quantify selection over recent evolutionary time scales, revealed similar signatures of positive selection on immune genes across species. These results advance the field of host-parasitoid dynamics by providing novel insights into the tempo and mode of insect host evolutionary dynamics, and offering a framework for making genotype to phenotype connections for immunocompetence phenotypes.

Florivory poses a threat to the sexual reproductive success of plants, having both quantitative and qualitative effects by reducing seed yield and seed quality. Plants can resist herbivory, tolerate damage, or employ a mix of these strategies to mitigate fitness costs. Organisms such as detritivores can increase nutrient availability in the rhizosphere, although it remains uncertain how plants invest these additional resources in contexts with and without herbivory, which may be particularly relevant in resource-limited ecosystems. We investigated the combined effects of detritivore beetle larvae and specialist florivorous pierid caterpillars on a semiarid Brassicaceae herb in a field setting, manipulating the abundance of both detritivores and floral herbivores across a full factorial density gradient. Despite promoting tolerance (surplus production of reproductive tissue) and increasing resistance (increased glucosinolate production), a high density of floral herbivores negatively impacted seed production. However, this mixed plant response led to a non-linear relationship between herbivore density and damage, demonstrating its effectiveness against herbivory. Increasing detritivore density did not affect seed production, nor did it enable plants to better resist or compensate for florivore damage. Instead, high detritivore density had an independent transgenerational effect by increasing the emergence rate of seedlings, thereby favouring seed quality over quantity. Prioritising seed quality over quantity may be an adjustment of the reproductive strategy to ensure seedling establishment in harsh and unpredictable environments at the cost of fewer offspring. This finding underscores the necessity of accounting for transgenerational effects in plant defence theory.

Flood disturbances act as strong filters on arthropod communities by excluding species that are not adapted to the high water-tables. Sensitive species can survive in these areas by either migrating to more terrestrial habitats or by using dry refuges within the wetland created by topographical heterogeneity. We examined the role of dry refugia and the scale at which these affect arthropod densities, mainly cursorial species, by using previous information on local dryness-wetness of wetlands. We selected sites wiith different flooding regimes within a large fen based on used prior information on local dryness-wetness of wetlands at 2 × 2 m resolution. We then used suction sampling to collect abundance data of beetles and spiders, and related these data to flooding regimes at spatial scales up to 26 × 26 m. These studies indicated that species within Linyphiidae, Staphylinidae and Chrysomelidae were more abundant in the presence of dry refuges at a scale of 10 × 10 m, whereas Salticidae preferred wetter areas. Species within Carabidae, Lycosidae and a number of other taxon groups were indifferent to these structures. Moreover, the data seem to suggest that mainly habitat generalists benefit from the refuges. Accordingly, those groups that were impartial to the dry refuges included almost exclusively species that can be categorised as wetland specialists. Small-scale refuges in heterogeneously flooded wetlands may be important to consider for guiding contemporary efforts to restore wetlands as a mean to promote biodiversity.

Pesticide use and habitat loss are major anthropogenic drivers of bee decline, raising global concerns about impaired crop pollination. However, the relative importance of these stressors and their combined impact on bee assemblages comprising species with different traits, such as body size or nesting strategy, remains unknown. Here we addressed these key knowledge gaps in a global quantitative synthesis analysing bee assemblage data from 681 crop fields across three continents. We found that both local pesticide hazards and decreasing proportions of semi-natural habitats in surrounding landscapes negatively affected wild bee abundance and species richness in crop fields, while pesticides additionally reduced functional and phylogenetic diversity. Semi-natural habitat availability did not buffer against these negative pesticide effects, nor did we identify any specific traits rending bees more vulnerable to one of the two drivers. Our findings highlight the pressing need to reduce non-target effects of pesticide use and emphasize that conservation and restoration of semi-natural habitats successfully promote wild bees, but are insufficient strategies to mitigate pesticide-driven losses of wild bee pollinators from crop fields.

Wetlands are valuable and diverse environments that contribute to a vast range of ecosystem services, such as flood control, drought resilience, and carbon sequestration. The provision of these ecosystem services depends on their hydrological functioning, which refers to how water is stored and moved within a wetland environment. Since the hydrological functions of wetlands vary widely based on location, wetland type, hydrological connectivity, vegetation, and seasonality, there is no single approach to defining these functions. Consequently, accurately identifying their hydrological functions to quantify ecosystem services remains challenging. To address this issue, we investigate the hydrological regimes of wetlands, focusing on water extent, to better understand their hydrological functions. We achieve this goal using Sentinel-1 SAR imagery and a self-supervised deep learning model (DeepAqua) to predict surface water extent for 43 Ramsar sites in Sweden between 2020 and 2023. Clustering analysis grouped the wetlands based on the water extent predictions into five archetypes based on their hydrological similarity: “spring-surging”, “spring-flooded”, “summer-flooded”, “slow-drying”, and “summer-dry”. The archetypes represent great heterogeneity, with flashy regimes being more prominent at higher latitudes and smoother regimes found preferentially in central and southern Sweden. Additionally, many wetlands show exceptional similarity in the timing and duration of flooding and drying events, which only became apparent when grouped. We attempt to link hydrological functions to the archetypes, whereby headwater wetlands, such as spring-surging wetlands, have the potential to accentuate floods and droughts, while slow-drying wetlands, typical of floodplain wetlands, are more likely to provide services such as flood attenuation and water storage during low flow conditions. Additionally, although wetlands can be classified in a myriad of ways, we propose that classifying wetlands based on the hydrological regime derived from water surface extent is useful for identifying hydrological functions specific to the site and season and when discharge or water level data are not available. Lastly, we foresee that hydrological-regime-based classification can be easily applied to other wetland-rich landscapes to better understand the hydrological functions and identify their respective ecosystem services.

Coevolution in trophic interactions is often considered as a major factor underlying diversification in interacting species. Most focus hitherto has however been on bottom-up processes where host-associated differentiation drives diversification, and less on top-down processes through enemy-associated differentiation. In this paper, we contrast bottom-up and top-down processes as drivers for diversification based both on theoretical reasoning and empirical studies. As a framework, we use the oscillation hypothesis which posits that local differentiation and network rewiring following geographic range shifts are major drivers for diversification. Our conclusion is that speciation through bottom-up and top-down processes likely act on different spatial scales but also that conditions for the interaction are different for hosts and enemies. For example, enemies can select their resource, leading to a specialized attack, but hosts cannot select their attacker, leading to a generalized defense. These differences have the consequence that local adaptation likely proceeds at a faster pace in enemies, and particularly in parasitoids, compared to hosts. Our analysis results in several testable hypotheses but we also argue that further theoretical evolutionary models are needed that combine ecological processes and genetic mechanisms.

Plant-enemy interactions on islands are shaped by ecological and evolutionary processes during the history of the islands. It is, however, rare to be able to observe the foundational phases on islands, but opportunities exist in areas with land-rising coastlines, such as in parts of the Baltic Sea. Using several plant-enemy systems, a pattern appears where low-defended plants are typically dominating on young islands and on shores of older islands. One reason for this pattern is that the main seed sources are plants from sites with low enemy attack rates and with high reproductive output. Later on in succession, once herbivore populations become established and attack rates increase, selection acts to increase plant resistance traits. Even though the number of studied plant species is still low, it is apparent that processes during foundational phases may be complex and simplified explanations for current patterns may be hard to find.

Null models provide an invaluable baseline against which to test fundamental ecological hypotheses and highlight patterns in foraging choices that cannot be explained by neutral processes or sampling artefacts. In this way, null models can advance our understanding beyond simplistic dietary descriptions to identify drivers of interactions. This method, however, requires estimates of resource availability, which are generally imperfect representations of highly dynamic systems. Optimising method selection is crucial for study design, but the precise effects of different resource availability data on the efficacy of null models are poorly understood. Using spider-prey networks as a model, we used prey abundance (suction sample) and activity density (sticky trap) data, and combinations of the two, to simulate null networks. We compared null diet composition, network properties (e.g., connectance and nestedness) and deviations of simulations from metabarcoding-based spider dietary data (to ascertain how different prey availability data alter ecological interpretation. Different sampling methods produced different null networks and inferred distinct prey selectivity. Null networks based on prey abundance and combined frequency-of-occurrence data more closely resembled the observed diet composition, and those based on prey abundance, activity density and proportionally combined data generated network properties most like dietary metabarcoding networks. We show that survey method choice impacts all aspects of null network analyses, the precise effects varying between methods but ultimately altering ecological interpretation by increasing disparity in network properties or trophic niches between null and directly constructed networks. Merging datasets can generate more complete prey availability data but is not a panacea because it introduces different biases. The choice of method should reflect the research hypotheses and study system being investigated. Ultimately, survey methods should emulate the foraging mode of the focal predator as closely as possible, informed by the known ecology, natural history and behaviour of the predator.

In aquatic ecosystems, zooplankton-associated bacteria potentially have a great impact on the structure of ecosystems and trophic networks by providing various metabolic pathways and altering the ecological niche of host species. To understand the composition and drivers of zooplankton gut microbiota, we investigated the associated microbial communities of four zooplankton genera from different seasons in the Baltic Sea using the 16S rRNA gene. Among the 143 ASVs (amplified sequence variants) observed belonging to heterotrophic bacteria, 28 ASVs were shared across all zooplankton hosts over the season, and these shared core ASVs represented more than 25% and up to 60% of relative abundance in zooplankton hosts but were present at low relative abundance in the filtered water. Zooplankton host identity had stronger effects on bacterial composition than seasonal variation, with the composition of gut bacterial communities showing host-specific clustering patterns. Although bacterial compositions and dominating core bacteria were different between zooplankton hosts, higher gut bacteria diversity and more bacteria contributing to the temporal variation were found in Temora and Pseudocalanus , compared to Acartia and Synchaeta . Diet diatom and filamentous cyanobacteria negatively correlated with gut bacteria diversity, but the difference in diet composition did not explain the dissimilarity of gut bacteria composition, suggesting a general effect of diet on the inner conditions in the zooplankton gut. Synchaeta maintained high stability of gut bacterial communities with unexpectedly low bacteria-bacteria interactions as compared to the copepods, indicating host-specific regulation traits. Our results suggest that the patterns of gut bacteria dynamics are host-specific and the variability of gut bacteria is not only related to host taxonomy but also related to host behavior and life history traits.

Wetland hydrological dynamics often dictate the composition of biological communities found in or near wetlands, either directly or through changes in vegetation composition. However, much remains unknown, particularly regarding how riparian arthropods respond to such dynamics. In this study, we used high-resolution hydrological data, along with presence of grazing livestock and shoreline vegetation height from 41 constructed wetlands in south-western Sweden to explore flood zone areas, flood frequencies, vegetation and grazing as drivers of the resident arthropod communities. The collected material consisted of 26,817 arthropods, where the dominant groups were Diptera (13,258 specimens), spiders (6,207) and Coleoptera (2,858), which were collected using SLAM (Sea Land and Air Malaise) trapping, along with pitfall trapping and vacuum sampling of riparian arthropods. We found group-specific responses to inundation frequencies, where wetlands with higher frequencies had lower abundances of some beetles and tipulids, and where wetlands with longer low-water table periods contained less trichopterans and heteropterans. In contrast, the size of flood zone areas only affected some wolf spider groups, that were more abundant in wetlands with intermediately sized flood zones. Shoreline vegetation height affected multiple groups, spiders, beetles and dipterans, but in different directions, whereas presence of grazing livestock had limited impact on abundances and community compositions. Given the variable responses to wetland hydrological and structural drivers, it seems that wetland arthropod communities would benefit from a high local wetland habitat variability, or wetlandscapes where individual wetlands have differing hydrological dynamics, morphology and vegetation.

AimAquatic-terrestrial transition zones contain features essential for many species that often benefit wetland biodiversity. Shallow flood-zone areas and reed beds are indicative of natural wetland habitats; however, how such features affect the native arthropod biodiversity in constructed wetlands is scarcely investigated. We asked how these shoreline features, as well as wetland shoreline properties and grazing management, influence riparian arthropod diversities and habitat specializations.LocationConstructed wetlands, Sweden.TaxaAraneae, Coleoptera, Diptera.MethodsTaxonomic-, phylogenetic- and trait diversities, along with habitat specialist species richness, were measured in riparian spiders, beetles and selected Diptera in 68 constructed wetlands in two regions of Sweden. We ran structural equation models to estimate direct and indirect effects from shoreline slope, flooded grassland, reed areas and grazing management on group diversities, and used multivariate models to determine drivers on habitat specialist species richness.ResultsFlooded grassland and reed area, along with shoreline slope influenced arthropod diversities, and responses differed between arthropod groups and diversity metrics. Spider trait diversity was greater in wetlands with larger flooded grassland areas, whilst beetle trait diversity was reduced. Spider phylogenetic diversity was greater in wetlands containing larger reed areas and in wetlands with steeper shorelines. However, species richness in predatory flies was greater in wetlands with more gentle shorelines. Grazing management had limited effects on arthropod diversities; however, species richness in wetland specialist and generalist predatory dipterans was greater in the absence of grazers in wetlands with greater flooded grassland areas.Main ConclusionsAs requirements vary considerably among arthropods, care must be taken when constructing and managing wetlands to benefit arthropod biodiversity. The present results suggest wetlands with a varied shoreline, albeit with greater proportions of flood areas, or multiple adjacent wetlands with varying shores in a wet landscape and a mild grazing regiment, would accommodate a more diverse arthropod fauna.

Wetlands are increasingly considered as nature based solution as they provide valuable services and functions to the society and environment, such as water quality improvement and biodiversity support. However, while land use and climate change have been affecting the functions and service of these ecosystems, it has become important to study the large-scale behaviour of wetlands in the landscape. Consequently, previous studies have suggested studying wetlands within wetlandscapes, defined as catchments containing networks of several wetlands, in order to understand large-scale functions of wetlands and their response to land-use and climate changes. This emphasizes the ecohydrological interactions of wetlands rather than having focus of individual wetlands. As the concept of wetlandscape is new, we have been working on systematically quantifying its governing properties in two different studies.In the first study, we systematically quantified ecohydrological properties of individual wetlands (e.g. wetland area, wetland catchment area and wetland type) in multiple wetlandscapes that may impact biodiversity and modulate nutrient flows as well as characteristics of the whole wetlandscape in terms of their large-scale processes and functions. Results from this work showed that large wetlandscapes generally contained features to support different ecosystem services compare to smaller wetlandscapes. More specifically, results indicated that small wetlandscapes have a poor ability to route water through their wetlands which was in contrast to large wetlandscapes. This implies that large wetlandscapes have a higher potential for large-scale retention of nutrients and contaminants.The second study consisted of investigating spatial and temporal wetland storage dynamics for multiple wetlands in the landscape in order to address considerable knowledge gaps regarding hydrological functions of wetlands and wetlandscapes. More specifically, we use high-resolution monitoring of wetland water levels to assess storage patterns and inundation conditions. A key finding of this work is that the position of wetlands is important for storage dynamics and flood buffering. Notably we find that wetlands located in headwater regions showed larger water level variability during the growing season (spring, summer and autumn) and hence were more active in temporal water storage than wetlands located downstream in the wetlandscape. This variability in water level for headwater wetlands was also associated with complex and patchy inundation conditions, while downstream wetlands essentially showed dry-state conditions during the entire summer.Results from both studies show that ecohydrological properties of wetlandscapes can have implications for ecosystem service delivery (e.g., biodiversity support and water quality) at regional level as well as for using wetlands as nature-based solution. Present results also support the importance of wetlandscape studies and the priority of a wetlandscape focus in future management programs to various regional environmental challenges.

Plants are attacked by multiple herbivores, and depend on a precise regulation of responses to cope with a wide range of antagonists. Simultaneous herbivory can occur in different plant compartments, which may pose a serious threat to plant growth and reproduction. In particular, plants often face co-occurring root and floral herbivory, but few studies have focused on such interactions. Here, we investigated in the field the combined density-dependent effects of root-chewing cebrionid beetle larvae and flower-chewing pierid caterpillars on the fitness and defense of a semiarid Brassicaceae herb. We found that the fitness impact of both herbivore groups was independent and density-dependent. Increasing root herbivore density non-significantly reduced plant fitness, while the relationship between increasing floral herbivore density and the reduction they caused in both seed number and seedling emergence was non-linear. The plant defensive response was non-additive with regard to the different densities of root and floral herbivores; high floral herbivore density provoked compensatory investment in reproduction, and this tolerance response was combined with aboveground chemical defense induction when also root herbivore density was high. Plants may thus prioritize specific trait combinations in response to varying combined below- and aboveground herbivore densities to minimize negative impacts on fitness.

Parasitoid wasps are major causes of mortality of many species, resulting in host immune defences commonly being the target of adaptive evolution, though such targets outside model species are poorly understood. Here we compare the power of different molecular tests of selection to provide such insights in novel species. We combined our understanding of variation in immune defence capacity among three closely related Galerucella leaf beetles with a shared parasitoid wasp, with information on genomic targets of parasitoid attacks from exemplar insect species. Based on this, we predicted that these genomic targets would vary in their evolutionary history across three closely related leaf beetle species, such that genomic targets would experience stronger positive selection in the species with strongest immune response to attack. Codon based tests revealed variation among species in positive selection genome wide, and showed that parasitoid-relevant immune genes experienced more positive selection in the species with the greatest immunocompetence (G. pusilla), while almost no immune genes were under positive selection in the species with the least immunocompetence (G. calmariensis). Genome wide analyses of the haplotype frequency spectrum also identified genes experiencing positive selection across the species, though few were parasitoid-relevant immune genes and no species was particularly enriched for them. Thus, our codon based test, which summarizes all sweep events since the last common ancestor, found results consistent with our a priori hypothesis, providing a series of targets for future functional genomic study.

Flood dynamics are important drivers of wetland biodiversity. With current climate and land-use changes affecting overall water cycling, many wetland ecosystems are at risk of degradation, affecting biodiversity support negatively. This emphasizes a need for understanding possible correlations between specific hydrological conditions and biodiversity support in wetlands, at least in terms of species composition. In this study, we used high resolution hydrological monitoring of water levels and insect sampling in a depressional wetland to investigate possible correlations between inundation patterns and insect abundance. Our results show that there is a high spatial and temporal heterogeneity in wetland inundation patterns and that this heterogeneity explains variation in insect abundance. This creates episodes of downstream wet and upstream dry conditions. In addition, the spatial variability was high between grid cells of 2 meter’s resolution. There were also indications that distance to stream affected insect community structure. The findings from this work show that that the local hydrological conditions can create heterogeneity in habitat conditions, which in turn lead to refuge habitats for species vulnerable to changes in inundation condition. This study also highlights the importance of acknowledging quantitative hydrological methods when assessing the relation to insect communities.

The distribution and community assembly of above- and belowground microbial communities associated with individual plants remain poorly understood, despite its consequences for plant-microbe interactions and plant health. Depending on how microbial communities are structured, we can expect different effects of the microbial community on the health of individual plants and on ecosystem processes. Importantly, the relative role of different factors will likely differ with the scale examined. Here, we address the driving factors at a landscape level, where each individual unit (oak trees) is accessible to a joint species pool. This allowed to quantify the relative effect of environmental factors and dispersal on the distribution of two types of fungal communities: those associated with the leaves and those associated with the soil of Quercus robur trees in a landscape in southwestern Finland. Within each community type, we compared the role of microclimatic, phenological, and spatial variables, and across community types, we examined the degree of association between the respective communities. Most of the variation in the foliar fungal community was found within trees, whereas soil fungal community composition showed positive spatial autocorrelation up to 50 m. Microclimate, tree phenology, and tree spatial connectivity explained little variation in the foliar and soil fungal communities. Foliar and soil fungal communities differed strongly in community structure, with no significant concordance detected between them. We provide evidence that foliar and soil fungal communities assemble independent of each other and are structured by different ecological processes.

Wetland area in agricultural landscapes has been heavily reduced to gain land for crop production, but in recent years there is increased societal recognition of the negative consequences from wetland loss on nutrient retention, biodiversity and a range of other benefits to humans. The current trend is therefore to re-establish wetlands, often with an aim to achieve the simultaneous delivery of multiple ecosystem services, i.e., multifunctionality. Here we review the literature on key objectives used to motivate wetland re-establishment in temperate agricultural landscapes (provision of flow regulation, nutrient retention, climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation and cultural ecosystem services), and their relationships to environmental properties, in order to identify potential for tradeoffs and synergies concerning the development of multifunctional wetlands. Through this process, we find that there is a need for a change in scale from a focus on single wetlands to wetlandscapes (multiple neighboring wetlands including their catchments and surrounding landscape features) if multiple societal and environmental goals are to be achieved. Finally, we discuss the key factors to be considered when planning for re-establishment of wetlands that can support achievement of a wide range of objectives at the landscape scale.