Farm2Fork through the lens of community ecology: concepts and applications in postharvest storage

Abstract

The environment in which postharvest crops are processed and stored is a dynamic ecosystem influenced not only by environmental factors such as temperature and humidity, but also by biotic influences such as humans and insects. Abiotic influences such as variation in landscapes of warehouses, processing facilities, storage and shipping containers, and urban and agricultural settings can also drive changes in ecosystem processes for insects living in a postharvest system. Principles of community ecology can help to tease apart broad interactions among the environment including succession, interactions with conspecifics that lead to competition and niche partitioning, behavioral ecology variation, and physiology and developmental changes. Focusing on these concepts for integrated pest management (IPM) for stored product insect pests can help pest managers to better predict risk thresholds and develop targeted approaches for treatments. Typically, pest management decisions focus on single species without regards to the interactions with other species. Without consideration of the entire ecosystem, targeted treatments for one species can have both direct and indirect impacts on other species that may have equally detrimental effects on stored products. Current knowledge of stored product ecosystems lags behind what is known for field pest ecosystems, and hinders our ability to design effective control strategies for the whole system. Here, we present a review of work on stored product insect pests using a community ecology lens. We analyze how the current state of the knowledge regarding species interactions and variation and incorporating factors such as movement, species interactions, energy transfer models in succession, behavior, and effects of climate change in ecological modeling can be used to better develop and implement more effective postharvest IPM. Implementing these concepts will significantly improve management of these insects and can help reduce time and cost associated with managing and treating insect infestations.

The Fall Armyworm and Larger Grain Borer Pest Invasions in Africa: Drivers, Impacts and Implications for Food Systems

“…The direct effects of evolutionary history, behaviour and physiology on the ecology and species biological responses to rising global temperatures are increasingly being documented [137,147,148]. Environmental conditions can alter the form, function and behaviour of organisms through physiological responses over short and long timescales and even over generations [149,150].…”

“…Some successful non-indigenous species are more tolerant to environmental and anthropogenic stressors than related native species, possibly stemming from evolutionary selection pressure (i.e., survival of only pre-adapted individuals for particular environmental conditions) during the invasion process [ 135 ]. Owing to this is the notion that invasive alien species are more eurythermal, i.e., able to maintain physiological functionality across variable temperatures [ 136 , 137 ]. Rapid adaptation is recognised as an important component of successful invasions [ 138 ].…”

Microbial vectoring capacity by internal‐ and external‐infesting stored product insects after varying dispersal periods between novel food patches: An underestimated risk

“…Hubert et al (2021) found that microbes are commonly found in the diet of dust mites; the bacterial genera Bacillus, Staphylococcus, and Kocuria were found in the diet where house dust mites had fed and microbe composition differed depending on the presence of mite life stages, including eggs and mite bodies. The microbial community can be influenced by the ecological succession of stored product insects (and vice versa) (Fandohan et al, 2003;Gerken & Morrison, 2023). Primary or internal-infesting insect pest will bring their own microbial colonizers to undamaged kernels that may be separate from secondary or external-infesting pests that can take advantage of damaged kernels and grain dust.…”