Experimental evidence of multiple ecosystem services and disservices provided by ecological intensification in Mediterranean agro‐ecosystems

Segre, Hila; Segoli, Michal; Carmel, Yohay; Shwartz, Assaf

doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13713

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…providing natural enemies in the ecosystem) not only reduces the use of pesticides and production costs but also helps to maintain local biodiversity [ 4 ]. However, the success of biological control depends on many factors, such as the environmental factors and traits of the species involved [ 5 , 6 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

et al. 2022

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Environmental impacts of conventional agriculture have generated interest in sustainable agriculture. Biological pest control is a fundamental tool, and ants are key players providing ecological services, as well as some disservices. We have used a meta-analytical approach to investigate the contribution of ants to biological control, considering their effects on pest and natural enemy abundance, plant damage and crop yield. We also evaluated whether the effects of ants are modulated by traits of ants, pests and other natural enemies, as well as by field size, crop system and experiment duration. Overall (considering all meta-analyses), from 52 studies on 17 different crops, we found that ants decrease the abundance of non-honeydew-producing pests, decrease plant damage and increase crop yield (services). In addition, ants decrease the abundance of natural enemies, mainly the generalist ones, and increase honeydew-producing pest abundance (disservices). We show that the pest control and plant protection provided by ants are boosted in shaded crops compared to monocultures. Furthermore, ants increase crop yield in shaded crops, and this effect increases with time. Finally, we bring new insights such as the importance of shaded crops to ant services, providing a good tool for farmers and stakeholders considering sustainable farming practices.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

et al. 2022

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“…Field margins may further provide ecosystem services that increase yield in our system as we previously showed (e.g. increasing the abundance of natural enemies compared to pests and providing pest and weed control in tomato crops Segre et al, 2019Segre et al, , 2020. Thus, we assume that increased revenue is the result of beneficial ecosystem services (i.e.…”

Section: Cost-effectiveness Metricmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Hence, equal damage per unit area in large fields resulted in higher total damage than in small fields. Uniform damage is not necessarily realistic since field margins may have a stronger effect on crop production in field edges than in field centre (Segre et al, 2020;Tschumi et al, 2016). Incorporating this assumption into the model would have increased the proportion of scenarios which selected sharing as the cost-effective strategy in larger field sizes, but including this possibility in our model without rigid numbers would be speculative.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Economic and not ecological variables shape the sparing–sharing trade‐off in a mixed cropping landscape

Segre

Carmel

Shwartz

2021

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. The framework of land sparing versus land sharing provides a useful analytical tool to address the crop-production/biodiversity trade-off. Despite multiple case studies testing the sparing-sharing trade-off, this framework still lacks the ability to identify the conditions in which sparing, or sharing, would be the preferred strategy for pareto-optimizing both food production and biodiversity.Under some conditions, ecosystem services may create a positive feedback between biodiversity and crop production, affecting the optimization.2. This study aims to identify the conditions and the relevant variables that determine the preferred land use strategy in terms of maximizing both biodiversity and food production, while accounting for positive feedback of ecosystem services in this analysis. We used a simulation model with data from a mixed cropping landscape (100 km 2 ) covering seven crop types, five taxonomic groups, three biodiversity metrics and 23 bioindicators to explore the variables shaping the biodiversity-production trade-off and ecosystem services underlying it. We explored a continuum of sparing large semi-natural patches to sharing by maintaining uncultivated field margins of varying size.3. Land sparing outperformed land sharing in 62% of the scenarios and it was economically more predictable. The optimization was shaped by costs, associated with crop type, rather than by landscape composition and configuration, biodiversity metric, taxonomic group or bioindicator. 4. Landscape configuration and taxonomic group results corroborate the notion that land sharing benefits mainly small organisms, and that the common width of field margins in many agri-environmental policies (10 m) is not cost-effective compared to land sparing. 5. Land sharing was the optimal strategy whenever it resulted in minimal costs, despite contributing little to biodiversity. Yet, when field margins were >20 m wide (small-scale sparing), land sharing maintained higher biodiversity and was at least as cost-effective as sparing.6. Synthesis and applications. Our model highlights the importance of socio-economic variables compared to ecological variables in selecting land-management strategy to pareto-optimize both food production and biodiversity. Considering opportunity costs alongside economic benefits from ecosystem services in various

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“…Therefore, assessing both ecosystem services and disservices is essential to account for potential trade-offs and interactions in biodiversity-friendly and sustainable crop management [ 12 ]. Yet, only a handful of studies have addressed multiple services and disservices simultaneously [ 13 , 14 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying services and disservices provided by insects and vertebrates in cacao agroforestry landscapes

et al. 2022

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Animals provide services such as pollination and pest control in cacao agroforestry systems, but also disservices. Yet, their combined contributions to crop yield and fruit loss are mostly unclear. In a full-factorial field experiment in northwestern Peru, we excluded flying insects, ants, birds and bats from cacao trees and assessed several productivity indicators. We quantified the contribution of each group to fruit set, fruit loss and marketable yield and evaluated how forest distance and canopy closure affected productivity. Fruit set dropped (from 1.7% to 0.3%) when flying insects were excluded and tripled at intermediate (40%) compared to high (greater than 80%) canopy cover in the non-exclusion treatment. Fruit set also dropped with bird and bat exclusion, potentially due to increased abundances of arthropods preying on pollinators or flower herbivores. Overall, cacao yields more than doubled when birds and bats had access to trees. Ants were generally associated with fruit loss, but also with yield increases in agroforests close to forest. We also evidenced disservices generated by squirrels, leading to significant fruit losses. Our findings show that several functional groups contribute to high cacao yield, while trade-offs between services and disservices need to be integrated in local and landscape-scale sustainable cacao agroforestry management.

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Experimental evidence of multiple ecosystem services and disservices provided by ecological intensification in Mediterranean agro‐ecosystems

Cited by 17 publications

References 58 publications

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

Economic and not ecological variables shape the sparing–sharing trade‐off in a mixed cropping landscape

Quantifying services and disservices provided by insects and vertebrates in cacao agroforestry landscapes

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