Crop diversity benefits carabid and pollinator communities in landscapes with semi‐natural habitats

Aguilera, Guillermo; Roslin, Tomas; Miller, Kirsten E.; Tamburini, Giovanni; Birkhofer, Klaus; Caballero‐López, Berta; Lindström, Sandra; Öckinger, Erik; Rundlöf, Maj; Rusch, Adrien; Smith, Henrik G.; Bommarco, Riccardo

doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13712

Cited by 97 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(71 reference statements)

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“…The identification of locally adapted sustainable farming practices (e.g. diversification of crop varieties, switch to perennial crops) might promote the biocontrol of both native habitat generalists and exotic pests [50][51][52]. As the threat of exotic species invasions is expected to increase with the intensification of international trade in the next decades [53,54], there is an urgent need to prevent or reduce establishment of new invaders and to develop innovative plant protection strategies for the control of emerging pests released from their coevolved antagonists.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species traits elucidate crop pest response to landscape composition: a global analysis

et al. 2020

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Recent synthesis studies have shown inconsistent responses of crop pests to landscape composition, imposing a fundamental limit to our capacity to design sustainable crop protection strategies to reduce yield losses caused by insect pests. Using a global dataset composed of 5242 observations encompassing 48 agricultural pest species and 26 crop species, we tested the role of pest traits (exotic status, host breadth and habitat breadth) and environmental context (crop type, range in landscape gradient and climate) in modifying the pest response to increasing semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. For natives, increasing semi-natural habitats decreased the abundance of pests that exploit only crop habitats or that are highly polyphagous. On the contrary, populations of exotic pests increased with an increasing cover of semi-natural habitats. These effects might be related to changes in host plants and other resources across the landscapes and/or to modified top-down control by natural enemies. The range of the landscape gradient explored and climate did not affect pests, while crop type modified the response of pests to landscape composition. Although species traits and environmental context helped in explaining some of the variability in pest response to landscape composition, the observed large interspecific differences suggest that a portfolio of strategies must be considered and implemented for the effective control of rapidly changing communities of crop pests in agroecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species traits elucidate crop pest response to landscape composition: a global analysis

et al. 2020

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“…Plant diversity is particularly crucial to maintain multiple ecosystem services as plants shape trophic interactions across several levels (Andow, 1991; Isbell et al., 2011; Scherber et al., 2010). Increasing plant diversity is therefore often suggested as a key management option to harness biodiversity‐based ecosystem services (Aguilera et al., 2020; Kremen & Merenlender, 2018). Plant diversification encompasses crop and non‐crop diversity as well as various management practices that can be implemented at multiple scales from field‐scale diversification (e.g., cover cropping, intercropping) to landscape‐scale diversification (e.g., diversifying crop rotation, semi‐natural habitats) (Letourneau et al., 2011; Rusch et al., 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benefits of increased cover crop diversity for predators and biological pest control depend on the landscape context

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et al. 2021

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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1. Increasing plant diversity in agricultural systems is a promising way to balance food production and biodiversity conservation. Biological pest control, a crucial ecosystem service delivered by natural enemies, could particularly benefit from increased plant diversity at the local scale. Such positive effects however often depend on the landscape context that shapes the pool of natural enemy species available and their ability to colonize newly created habitats. However, how the landscape context modulates the local effect of plant diversity on natural enemies and pest control services remains unclear.2. Here, we manipulated the diversity of cover crops (2 versus 20 plant species) in nine pairs of vineyards located along a landscape gradient ranging from 20 to 60% of semi-natural habitats. We sampled natural enemy communities in the soil and foliage and measured the predation rate of an important moth pest in European vineyards (Lobesia botrana).3. Diverse cover crops enhanced the abundance of natural enemies by 140% across the experiment, but without changing their taxonomic richness and composition.We further found a distance-decay effect of cover crops on natural enemy abundance across cover crop types. 4. The landscape context remarkably modulated the effects of local plant diversity on natural enemy abundance and predation rates. While predation rates were on average similar in the low and high cover crop diversity treatments across the experiment, diverse cover crops had higher positive effects on predation and natural enemies in simple (<50% semi-natural habitats) than complex landscapes. Predation rates increased from 11 to 42% in the high compared with low cover crop diversity treatments in simple landscapes. Synthesis and applications:Our study demonstrates the benefits of increasing plant diversity at the local scale to enhance the abundance of natural enemies as well as the level of biological pest control services in vineyard agroecosystems. Diverse cover crops mostly benefit natural enemies and biological pest control in simplifiedThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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“…Considering the spatial proximity of the investigated fields, we did not calculate the landscape composition for each field separately. We selected an area of the landscape which embedded the buffers of 1-km radius (Aguilera et al, 2020) surrounding all the 29 investigated fields (Supplementary Figure S2). Proportion of semi-natural habitats was calculated using a land-use digitalized map layer (Digitales Landbedeckungsmodell für Deutschland DLM-DE2009, Referenzjahr 2009) in ArcMap software (version 10.5.1, ESRI).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bosem Baillod et al (2017 reported that cereal aphid numbers can be reduced by optimizing the composition, configuration, and temporal heterogeneity of the crop mosaic. Increasing the diversity of crop types in a landscape can contribute to the conservation of service-providing arthropod communities such as carabids, particularly if the diversification happens in landscapes with a high proportion of semi-natural habitats (Aguilera et al, 2020). However, an increase in enemy abundance does not always translate to a concomitant increase in pest control (Chaplin-Kramer et al, 2011), since both positive and negative interactions may occur among natural enemy species (Letourneau et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Temporal Crop Diversification of a Cereal-Based Cropping System on Generalist Predators and Their Biocontrol Potential

et al. 2021

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In agroecosystems, crop diversification plays a fundamental role in maintaining and regenerating biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as natural pest control. Temporal diversification of cropping systems can affect the presence and activity of natural enemies by providing alternative hosts and prey, food, and refuges for overwintering. However, we still lack studies on the effects of temporal diversification on generalist predators and their biocontrol potential conducted at field scale in commercial agricultural settings. Here, we measured proxies of ecosystem functions related with biological pest control in 29 commercial agricultural fields characterized by cereal-based cropping system in Lower-Saxony, northern Germany. The fields differed in the number of crops and cover crops cultivated during the previous 12 years. Using the Rapid Ecosystem Function Assessment approach, we measured invertebrate predation, seed predation and activity density of generalist predators. We aimed at testing whether the differences in the crop rotations from the previous years would affect activity of predators and their predation rates in the current growing season. We found that the length of the crop rotation had neutral effects on the proxies measured. Furthermore, predation rates were generally lower if the rotation comprised a higher number of cover crops compared to rotation with less cover crops. The activity density of respective taxa of predatory arthropods responded differently to the number of cover crops in the crop rotation. Our results suggest that temporal crop diversity may not benefit the activity and efficiency of generalist predators when diversification strategies involve crops of very similar functional traits. Adding different resources and traits to the agroecosystems through a wider range of cultivated crops and the integration of semi-natural habitats are aspects that need to be considered when developing more diverse cropping systems aiming to provide a more efficient natural pest control.

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Crop diversity benefits carabid and pollinator communities in landscapes with semi‐natural habitats

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 97 publications

References 56 publications

Species traits elucidate crop pest response to landscape composition: a global analysis

Species traits elucidate crop pest response to landscape composition: a global analysis

Benefits of increased cover crop diversity for predators and biological pest control depend on the landscape context

Effects of Temporal Crop Diversification of a Cereal-Based Cropping System on Generalist Predators and Their Biocontrol Potential

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