Agricultural landscape simplification reduces natural pest control: A quantitative synthesis

Abstract

Numerous studies show that landscape simplification reduces abundance and diversity of natural enemies in agroecosystems, but its effect on natural pest control remains poorly quantified. Further, natural enemy impacts on pest populations have usually been estimated for a limited number of taxa and have not considered interactions among predator species. In a quantitative synthesis with data collected from several cropping systems in Europe and North America, we analyzed how the level and within-field spatial stability of natural pest control services was related to the simplification of the surrounding landscape. All studies used aphids as a model species and exclusion cages to measure aphid pest control. Landscape simplification was quantified by the proportion of cultivated land within a 1 km radius around each plot. We found a consistent negative effect of landscape simplification on the level of natural pest control, despite interactions among enemies. Average level of pest control was 46 % lower in homogeneous landscapes dominated by cultivated land, as compared with more complex landscapes. Landscape simplification did not affect the amount of positive or negative interactions among ground-dwelling and vegetation-dwelling predators, or the within-field stability of pest control. Our synthesis demonstrates that agricultural intensification through landscape simplification has negative effects on the level of natural pest control with important implications for management to maintain and enhance ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. Specifically, preserving and restoring semi-natural habitats emerges as a fundamental first step to maintain and enhance pest control services provided by predatory arthropods to agriculture.

A new analytical framework of farming system and agriculture model diversities. A review

“…This was often accompanied by an increase in field size and the removal of or decrease in areas of remnant non-crop habitats (Bianchi et al 2006;Stoate et al 2001). This landscape simplification has strong impacts on regulation ecosystem services such as biological regulation services (Bianchi et al 2006;Rusch et al 2016;Tscharntke et al 2005) and regulation of liquid and mass flows (Verhagen et al 2016), as well as on the biodiversity influenced by landscape heterogeneity (Benton et al 2003;Gàmez-Virués et al 2015;Tscharntke et al 2005).…”

What specific plant traits support ecosystem services such as pollination, bio-control and water quality protection in temperate climates? A systematic map protocol

“…This, combined with recent calls for sustainable intensification [15], drives the need to control pests using other means, such as predation by their natural enemies (biological pest control) [16]. However, supportive habitat that provides shelter, overwintering sites, alternate hosts or prey and pollen and nectar [17], has been widely removed [18]. These off-crop habitats within agricultural land offer other benefits too.…”

A estrutura da paisagem e o potencial controle das “cigarrinhas-das-pastagens”

“…No experimento com sentinel prey, apesar de não ser possível identificar o predador através de marcas na presa (pelo fato da presa ser real), esta apresenta os sinais químicos e visuais reais ). Apesar das diferenças específicas de cada um dos dois métodos ) e do extenso uso desses métodos para avaliar o processo de predação (Jordani et al 2015;Rusch et al 2016), não se sabe como essas variações metodológicas influenciam as respostas de predação e interferem na análise de padrões ecológicos, como a relação entre predação e estrutura da paisagem (Rusch et al 2016 Abstract: Biological pest control is an important ecosystem service in agricultural and pastures areas, and can bring both economic and environmental benefits. In areas of tropical pastures, spittlebugs can bring losses of several millions per year, thus being a pest of great importance.…”

“…Since the ecosystem service of pest control depends on the predation process (Wilby and Thomas, 2002;), this study show that the provision of this service can be regulated by the landscape structure. Knowing that agricultural and livestock expansions tends to replace forests by cultivated or pasture areas (Tscharntke et al 2005;Rusch et al, 2016), agricultural landscape planning and management should be made in order to maximize the positive effects of forest cover in the provision of pest control and other ecosystem services (Tscharntke et al 2005;. Also, our data is the first to suggest that the type of prey and the exposure time used to measure predation influence the observed ecological patterns, drawing then attention to the need to consider the method in the survey of new data and in the comparison of data already published.…”

“…The sentinel prey experiment type is widely used in predation experiments (Rusch et al, 2016) and consists of providing dead individuals of a species. In this study we used a natural pasture pest Deois flavopicta (homoptera: Cercopidae), which is the most important spittlebug in the study region.…”