The relationship between agricultural intensification and biological control: experimental tests across Europe

Thies, Carsten; Haenke, Sebastian; Scherber, Christoph; Bengtsson, Janne; Bommarco, Riccardo; Clement, Lars W.; Ceryngier, Piotr; Dennis, Christopher; Emmerson, Mark; Gagić, Vesna; Hawro, Violetta; Liira, Jaan; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Winqvist, Camilla; Tscharntke, Teja

doi:10.1890/10-0929.1

Cited by 169 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…However, how different aspects of landscape complexity function with respect to chemical pest control has remained poorly understood. In part, the lack of conclusive evidence is due to the complexity of ecological and economic factors, as well as crop-specific heterogeneity, annual conditions, and/or regional characteristics (26). Using a combination of crop-specific, region-specific, and year-specific controls, we parsed apart the individual effects of crop diversity, cropland extent, and field size on insecticide use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields

Larsen

Noack

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Agricultural landscape intensification has enabled food production to meet growing demand. However, there are concerns that more simplified cropland with lower crop diversity, less noncrop habitat, and larger fields results in increased use of pesticides due to a lack of natural pest control and more homogeneous crop resources. Here, we use data on crop production and insecticide use from over 100,000 field-level observations from Kern County, California, encompassing the years 2005-2013 to test if crop diversity, field size, and cropland extent affect insecticide use in practice. Overall, we find that higher crop diversity does reduce insecticide use, but the relationship is strongly influenced by the differences in crop types between diverse and less diverse landscapes. Further, we find insecticide use increases with increasing field size. The effect of cropland extent is distance-dependent, with nearby cropland decreasing insecticide use, whereas cropland further away increases insecticide use. This refined spatial perspective provides unique understanding of how different components of landscape simplification influence insecticide use over space and for different crops. Our results indicate that neither the traditionally conceived "simplified" nor "complex" agricultural landscape is most beneficial to reducing insecticide inputs; reality is far more complex.pesticides | biological control | landscape simplification | landscape complexity | crop diversity

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields

Larsen

Noack

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Unfortunately, no comparable study is currently available assessing the landscape-scale effects of more than two levels of functional diversity (8,14,24,30,31). Further research is thus needed to assess the general relevance of natural enemy interactions, which hold the potential to explain previously observed variation in landscape-scale responses of pest control services (14,30). Tests are based on the model contrast matrix of herbivory (adjusted P values: Benjamini-Hochberg method).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural enemy interactions constrain pest control in complex agricultural landscapes

Martin

Reineking

Seo

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

263

254

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Biological control of pests by natural enemies is a major ecosystem service delivered to agriculture worldwide. Quantifying and predicting its effectiveness at large spatial scales is critical for increased sustainability of agricultural production. Landscape complexity is known to benefit natural enemies, but its effects on interactions between natural enemies and the consequences for crop damage and yield are unclear. Here, we show that pest control at the landscape scale is driven by differences in natural enemy interactions across landscapes, rather than by the effectiveness of individual natural enemy guilds. In a field exclusion experiment, pest control by flying insect enemies increased with landscape complexity. However, so did antagonistic interactions between flying insects and birds, which were neutral in simple landscapes and increasingly negative in complex landscapes. Negative natural enemy interactions thus constrained pest control in complex landscapes. These results show that, by altering natural enemy interactions, landscape complexity can provide ecosystem services as well as disservices. Careful handling of the tradeoffs among multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity, and societal concerns is thus crucial and depends on our ability to predict the functional consequences of landscape-scale changes in trophic interactions.arthropods and birds | biodiversity-ecosystem functioning | biological pest control | ecosystem service provision | land use intensification

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“…For biological control, such simple, legitimate, and salient indicators still have to be developed, with the hope that they become credible one day. However, results of many studies on relations between landscape heterogeneity (composition and configuration), management practices, and biological control levels (e.g., Rusch et al 2011;Thies et al 2011), and several reviews and meta-analyses (e.g., Bianchi et al 2006;Veres et al 2013) or models (e.g., Rusch et al 2012;Vinatier et al 2009) could be used to develop operational field indicators. Their legitimacy would be high, but their saliency and credibility would still have to be verified.…”

Section: Promising Tools For Monitoring Dynamics Of Diversified Farmimentioning

confidence: 99%

How to implement biodiversity-based agriculture to enhance ecosystem services: a review

Duru

Thérond

Martin

et al. 2015

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

424

283

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Intensive agriculture has led to several drawbacks such as biodiversity loss, climate change, erosion, and pollution of air and water. A potential solution is to implement management practices that increase the level of provision of ecosystem services such as soil fertility and biological regulation. There is a lot of literature on the principles of agroecology. However, there is a gap of knowledge between agroecological principles and practical applications. Therefore, we review here agroecological and management sciences to identify two facts that explain the lack of practical applications: (1) the occurrence of high uncertainties about relations between agricultural practices, ecological processes, and ecosystem services, and (2) the site-specific character of agroecological practices required to deliver expected ecosystem services. We also show that an adaptive-management approach, focusing on planning and monitoring, can serve as a framework for developing and implementing learning tools tailored for biodiversity-based agriculture. Among the current learning tools developed by researchers, we identify two main types of emergent support tools likely to help design diversified farming systems and landscapes: (1) knowledge bases containing scientific supports and experiential knowledge and (2) model-based games. These tools have to be coupled with well-tailored field or management indicators that allow monitoring effects of practices on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Finally, we propose a research agenda that requires bringing together contributions from agricultural, ecological, management, and knowledge management sciences, and asserts that researchers have to take the position of "integration and implementation sciences."

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The relationship between agricultural intensification and biological control: experimental tests across Europe

Cited by 169 publications

References 57 publications

Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields

Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields

Natural enemy interactions constrain pest control in complex agricultural landscapes

How to implement biodiversity-based agriculture to enhance ecosystem services: a review

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