Back to Search Start Over

Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

Authors :
Karp, Daniel S.
Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca
Meehan, Timothy D.
Martin, Emily A.
DeClerck, Fabrice
Grab, Heather
Gratton, Claudio
Hunt, Lauren
Larsen, Ashley E.
Martinez-Salinas, Alejandra
O'Rourke, Megan E.
Rusch, Adrien
Poveda, Katja
Jonsson, Mattias
Rosenheim, Jay A.
Schellhorn, Nancy A.
Tscharntke, Teja
Wratten, Stephen D.
Zhang, Wei
Iverson, Aaron L.
Adler, Lynn S.
Albrecht, Matthias
Alignier, Audrey
Angelella, Gina M.
Anjum, Muhammad Zubair
Avelino, Jacques
Batary, Peter
Baveco, Johannes M.
Bianchi, Felix J.J.A.
Birkhofer, Klaus
Bohnenblust, Eric W.
Bommarco, Riccardo
Brewer, Michael J.
Caballero-López, Berta
Carrière, Yves
Carvalheiro, Luísa G.
Cayuela, Luis
Centrella, Mary
Cetkovic, Aleksandar
Henri, Dominic Charles
Chabert, Ariane
Costamagna, Alejandro C.
De la Mora, Aldo
De Kraker, Joop
Desneux, Nicolas
Diehl, Eva
Diekötter, Tim
Dormann, Carsten F.
Eckberg, James O.
Entling, Martin H.
Fiedler, Daniela
Franck, Pierre
van Veen, Frank
Frank, Thomas
Gagic, Vesna
Garratt, Michael P.D.
Getachew, Awraris
Gonthier, David J.
Goodell, Peter B.
Graziosi, Ignazio
Groves, Russell L.
Gurr, Geoff M.
Hajian-Forooshani, Zachary
Heimpel, George E.
Herrmann, John D.
Huseth, Anders S.
Inclán, Diego J.
Ingrao, Adam J.
Iv, Phirun
Jacot, Katja
Johnson, Gregg A.
Jones, Laura
Kaiser, Marina
Kaser, Joe M.
Keasar, Tamar
Kim, Tania N.
Kishinevsky, Miriam
Landis, Douglas A.
Lavandero, Blas
Lavigne, Claire
Le Ralec, Anne
Lemessa, Debissa
Letourneau, Deborah K.
Liere, Heidi
Lu, Yanhui
Lubin, Yael
Luttermoser, Tim
Maas, Bea
Mace, Kevi
Madeira, Felipe
Mader, Viktoria
Cortesero, Anne-Marie
Marini, Lorenzo
Martinez, Eliana
Martinson, Holly M.
Menozzi, Philippe
Source :
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publication Year :
2018

Abstract

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies.

Details

Language :
English
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Accession number :
edsair.od......3631..983ea826925c7f8491b56ab7ac88e909