Predation‐mediated ecosystem services and disservices in agricultural landscapes

Abstract

Ecological intensification may reduce environmental externalities of agriculture by harnessing biodiversity to benefit regulating ecosystem services. However, to propose management options for the production of such services, there is a need to understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of net effects between ecosystem services and disservices provided by wild organisms across taxonomic groups in relation to habitat and landscape management. We studied the contribution of predatory vertebrates and invertebrates (including both carnivores and seed herbivores) to regulating ecosystem services and disservices in 16 cereal fields in response to a local habitat contrast and a landscape complexity gradient. From May to November 2016, we provided weed (predation reflects an ecosystem service) and crop (predation reflects a disservice) seeds, as well as pest (predation reflects an ecosystem service) and beneficial (predation reflects a disservice) invertebrate prey to predators. Seed predation was dominated by vertebrates, while vertebrates and invertebrates contributed equally to predation of animal prey. Before harvest, predation steadily increased from very low levels in May to high levels in July independent of the resource type. After harvest, ecosystem services declined more rapidly than disservices. The presence of adjacent seminatural grasslands promoted crop seed predation, but reduced pest prey predation. Predation on beneficial prey decreased with increasing proportions of seminatural grassland in the landscape. Predatory vertebrates and invertebrates provide important ecosystem services due to the consumption of pests. However, beneficial invertebrates and crop seeds were often consumed to a similar or even higher extent than harmful invertebrates or weed seeds. Our results therefore raise concerns that management options aimed at enhancing service providers may simultaneously increase levels of disservices. By considering positive and negative effects simultaneously, this study addresses an important knowledge gap and highlights the importance of interactions between local management, landscape composition, and service and disservice provision across taxa and over time. Considering trade-offs between ecosystem services and disservices when evaluating the net effects of biodiversity conservation measures on ecosystem service provision is crucial. Future agri-environment schemes that offer payments for seminatural habitats may need to provide higher compensation for farmers in cases where net effects are likely to be negative.

Aphid cards – Useful model for assessing predation rates or bias prone nonsense?

“…Other methods such as the use of living organisms in exclosure experiments are undoubtedly more elaborate but also much more time consuming, costly and labour intensive. With a magnitude of sentinel prey methods and organisms of different sizes falling into different predator feeding spectra (including e.g., aphids (Gardiner et al, ; Karp et al, ; Ximenez‐Embun et al, ), corn earworm eggs (Meehan, Werling, Landis, & Gratton, ), fall armyworm larvae (Meehan et al, ), wax moth larvae (Meehan et al, ; Zirbel, Bassett, Grman, & Brudvig, ), cabbage moth larvae (Ferrante, Barone, & Lövei, ), ladybird eggs (Schneider, Krauss, & Steffan‐Dewenter, ), onion fly pupae (Menalled et al, ), earthworms (Tschumi, Ekroos, Hjort, Smith, & Birkhofer, ), mealworms (Tschumi et al, ) as well as artificial plasticine caterpillars (Howe, Lövei, & Nachman, ; Howe, Nachman, & Lövei, ; Lemessa, Hambäck, & Hylander, ) proposed, comparability between studies is questionable. While these differences in methods can be useful to answer specific questions in specific environments (Birkhofer et al, ; Macfadyen, Davies, & Zalucki, ), this generally highlights the need for a unified and standardized design to record predation rates under the REFA regime to allow comparability in large scale assessments.…”

Conceptual ambiguity hinders measurement and management of ecosystem disservices

“…Cost–benefit analyses are also affected by uncertainty, which are inherent to ecosystem services assessments (Wegner & Pascual, 2011). For costs and benefits associated with wild animal taxa, it can be more effective to use an integrated ecological field study design to address the trade‐offs and synergies in situ, for example, parasitism, predation or hyperparasitism in crop systems (Fischer et al., 2017; Gagic et al, 2012; Tschumi, Ekroos, Hjort, Smith, & Birkhofer, 2018). This approach was used by 11 studies (Table , Saunders, 2020).…”

Diversity of Species and the Occurrence and Development of a Specialized Pest Population—A Review Article

“…The biodiversity of farmlands has significantly declined, which can be explained by the intensification of agricultural production [32][33][34]. In consequence, this decline may reduce the abundance of natural enemies and their effects on pest species [35][36][37][38].…”