Visitation of Social Wasps in Arabica Coffee Crop (Coffea Arabica L.) Intercropped with Different Tree Species

Abstract

Brazil stands out for its coffee plantations for which the 2015 harvest yielded a revenue of over 600 million dollars. Its production is closely related to biotic and abiotic factors, and insect pests are noted for reducing this production. However, those insects are highly influenced by biological control agents such as predator wasps. This study aimed to survey the wasps visiting intercropping coffee cultivation with different tree species. Four plots of coffee intercropped with different tree species and coffee in full sun (control) were sampled for comparison. Tree species were: Teak (Tectona grandis L.f), Australian redcedar (Toona ciliata M. Roem.), Mangium (Acacia mangium Willd.) and Avocado (Persea americana Mill.). Six hundred and thirty-nine individuals of social wasps were collected, with 20 species and 7 genera, and an overall diversity index of 1.14. The plot with Avocado had the highest Shannon diversity index (H ‘) 1.23 and the lowest dominance according to the Index Berger-Paker (DPB) 0.54.

Social wasps are effective biocontrol agents of key lepidopteran crop pests

“…owing to higher foraging rates than solitary wasps [58], their tendency to fixate on the most abundant prey source [48], and already being a model species in the study of animal behaviour [59]. Moreover, there are around 1000 species of social wasps, with many genera distributed in a cosmopolitan fashion across the globe, appearing to thrive in disturbed and agricultural habitats [28][29][30][31][32][33]. We conducted a controlled experiment, which provides evidence that native social wasps could be effectively employed as biocontrol agents of lepidopteran pests in economically important crops.…”

“…The potential in harnessing predatory wasps in biocontrol was recognized over a century ago when Polistes paper wasps were identified as important predatory enemies of cotton worm Alabama argillacea [19,20,27]. More recent work has shown that wasps are common in a range of agricultural environments [28][29][30][31][32][33] and that pest lepidopterans form a main or significant portion of wasp forage [21,24,[34][35][36][37][38][39]. One concern is that the overall impact of predatory wasps on crop pests may be limited, as many pests hide within the plant, potentially making them inaccessible to hunting wasps.…”

Influência de fragmentos florestais sobre a nidificação de vespas sociais (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) em cafeeiro

“…Desta forma, torna-se mais vantajoso para esses insetos nidificar próximo destes locais, resultando em menores gastos energéticos no forrageio. A área C1 ofereceu condições para que estes insetos se estabelecessem, provavelmente devido à presença espécies ruderais e cultura de bananas, tornando este sistema mais diversificado (Tomazella et al, 2018).…”

“…Diferentes estudos reportam que áreas de cultura associadas a outras culturas, fragmentos naturais próximos e plantas ruderais favorecem positivamente diferentes populações de inimigos naturais (Fragoso et al, 2001;Altieri & Silva, 2003;Amaral et al, 2010;Tomazella et al, 2018) o que se alinha aos dados obtidos no presente estudo.…”

Ecosystem services provided by aculeate wasps

“…3B); many lepidopterans and dipterans are significant crop pests. Predatory wasps are common in a range of agricultural environments, suggesting that such crops provide rewarding forage patches (Bommarco et al ., 2011; Rodriguez et al ., 2012; Souza et al ., 2013; Jacques et al ., 2015, 2018; Tomazella et al ., 2018). Moreover, observational studies report social predatory wasps as one of the main natural predators of lepidopteran pests in agricultural settings (Rabb & Lawson, 1957; Picanço et al ., 2006, 2010; Bommarco et al ., 2011; Picanço, 2012; Pereira et al ., 2018; Lourido et al ., 2019) and that they can successfully locate such prey using olfactory cues (Pietrantuono, Moreyra & Lozada, 2018; Southon et al ., 2019).…”