Maximizing arthropod‐mediated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the role of native plants

Abstract

Beneficial arthropods, including native bees, predators, and parasitoids, provide valuable ecosystem services worth $8 billion to US agriculture each year. These arthropod‐mediated ecosystem services (AMES) include crop pollination and pest control, which help to maintain agricultural productivity and reduce the need for pesticide inputs. Maximizing survival and reproduction of beneficial arthropods requires provision of pollen and nectar resources that are often scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. Increasingly, native plants are being evaluated for this purpose. Native plants can outperform recommended non‐natives and also provide local adaptation, habitat permanency, and support of native biodiversity. We predict that the success of insect conservation programs using flowering plants to increase AMES on farmland will depend on landscape context, with the greatest success in landscapes of moderate complexity. Reintegration of native plants into agricultural landscapes has the potential to support multiple conservation goals, and will require the collaboration of researchers, conservation educators, and native plant experts.

Land-use change reduces habitat suitability for supporting managed honey bee colonies in the Northern Great Plains

“…Whereas considerable investments have been directed toward developing commodity crops on private lands, few studies have evaluated how these investments have affected ecosystem services that benefit the public (39,40). Pollinators serve as effective model organisms for evaluating ecosystem service tradeoffs because their service to humans is directly quantifiable (2,41) and their health and provided pollination services can be linked with land management activities. Conservation efforts designed to promote habitat for pollinators in the NGP will likely benefit other ecosystem services, including conservation of biodiversity; however, these added benefits need to be quantified so that informed policy decisions can be made that maximize ecosystem service delivery while reducing ecosystem disservices from specific types of agricultural practices.…”

Does urbanization explain differences in interactions between an insect herbivore and its natural enemies and mutualists?

“…Given the reduction in native plant diversity and abundance in urbanized areas (Dreistadt et al 1990;Burton et al 2005;Williams et al 2005;Williams et al 2008;Isaacs et al 2009;Walker et al 2009), it would be surprising if predators were not sensitive to urbanization (McKinney 2006;Jones and Leather 2012;Otoshi et al 2015). Urban management techniques such as treading, bird feeding, mowing and pesticide application negatively impact predacious beetles and hemipterans (Morris and Rispin 1987;Helden and Leather 2004;Orros and Fellowes 2012;Jones and Leather 2012;Orros et al 2015;Bennett and Lovell 2014;Smith et al 2015).…”

Spatial diversification of agroecosystems to enhance biological control and other regulating services: An agroecological perspective

“…According to the intermediate landscape-complexity hypothesis , introducing and managing non-crop habitats at the local scale will be more effective in enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem processes in landscapes of intermediate complexity, compared with simple or complex ones (a concept also developed by Isaacs et al 2009). Indeed, 'in cleared [i.e.…”