scholarly journals Governance of Ecosystem Services in Agroecology: When Coordination is Needed but Difficult to Achieve

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Salliou ◽  
Roldan Muradian ◽  
Cécile Barnaud
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Pest Control ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Farming Systems ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Pesticide Use ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Coordination Strategies

Transitioning towards agroecology involves the integration of biodiversity based ecosystem services into farming systems: for example, relying on biological pest control rather than pesticides. One promising approach for pest control relies on the conservation of semi-natural habitats at the landscape scale to encourage natural enemies of insect pests. However, this approach may require coordination between farmers to manage the interdependencies between the providers and beneficiaries of this ecosystem service. The main objective of this study was to identify hindrances to landscape-scale coordination strategies to control pests. To this end, we used a theoretical framework specifically designed to explore social interdependencies linked to ecosystem services. We applied this framework to a participatory research case study on pest control in apple orchards in southwest France to identify and describe key obstacles. We found four main impediments: (1) The perception of most stakeholders that the landscape does not deliver significant pest control services, (2) the challenge of coping with agroecological uncertainties, (3) an integrated vertical supply chain focused on pesticide use, (4) the existence of independent, non-collective alternatives. We discuss the potential of overcoming these obstacles or turning them into opportunities that promote a transition to agroecology and the integration of ecosystem services in farms and their supply chains.

scholarly journals Unexpected Effects of Local Management and Landscape Composition on Predatory Mites and Their Food Resources in Vineyards

Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Stefan Möth ◽  
Andreas Walzer ◽  
Markus Redl ◽  
Božana Petrović ◽  
Christoph Hoffmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pest Control ◽  
Predatory Mites ◽  
Mite Species ◽  
Landscape Composition ◽  
Pesticide Use ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Phytophagous Mites ◽  
Spontaneous Vegetation ◽  
Important Food Source ◽  
Eriophyoid Mite

Viticultural practices and landscape composition are the main drivers influencing biological pest control in vineyards. Predatory mites, mainly phytoseiid (Phytoseiidae) and tydeoid mites (Tydeidae), are important to control phytophagous mites (Tetranychidae and Eriophyidae) on vines. In the absence of arthropod prey, pollen is an important food source for predatory mites. In 32 paired vineyards located in Burgenland/Austria, we examined the effect of landscape composition, management type (organic/integrated), pesticide use, and cover crop diversity of the inter-row on the densities of phytoseiid, tydeoid, and phytophagous mites. In addition, we sampled pollen on vine leaves. Typhlodromus pyri Scheuten was the main phytoseiid mite species and Tydeus goetzi Schruft the main tydeoid species. Interestingly, the area-related acute pesticide toxicity loading was higher in organic than in integrated vineyards. The densities of phytoseiid and tydeoid mites was higher in integrated vineyards and in vineyards with spontaneous vegetation. Their population also profited from an increased viticultural area at the landscape scale. Eriophyoid mite densities were extremely low across all vineyards and spider mites were absent. Biological pest control of phytophagous mites benefits from less intensive pesticide use and spontaneous vegetation cover in vineyard inter-rows, which should be considered in agri-environmental schemes.

A PREDATOR-PEST MODEL WITH ALLEE EFFECT AND PEST CULLING AND ADDITIONAL FOOD PROVISION TO THE PREDATOR — APPLICATION TO PEST CONTROL

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 295-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOURAV KUMAR SASMAL ◽  
DIBYENDU SEKHAR MANDAL ◽  
JOYDEV CHATTOPADHYAY
Keyword(s):  
Pest Control ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Allee Effects ◽  
Additional Food ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Control Approach ◽  
Harmful Effects

The harmful effects of insect pests on human health and agricultural output are a major global concern. Frequent use of chemical pesticides as a means of pest control can have detrimental effects on the environment, resulting in water and soil pollution, food toxicity, resistance to pesticides, etc. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop a biological pest-control approach that would mitigate these harmful effects. The main purpose of the present study is to explore the interaction between strong Allee effects in the pest with other biological control mechanisms, such as providing additional food to the predator and pest culling as a means of proposing an efficient pest-control policy. To achieve this goal, local stability analysis around the equilibria, possible bifurcation and some basic dynamical features of the system was performed. Our work focuses on the basin of stability in multiple stable regions of the model, which yields the probability of convergence of each equilibrium for a given set of different initial conditions. The system exhibits bi-stability and tri-stability of the equilibria. Our findings indicate that providing additional food to the predator can be an efficient stand-alone pest control strategy, which can, if needed, be combined with other methods.

scholarly journals Temporal resource continuity increases predator abundance in a metapopulation model: insights for conservation and biocontrol

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Spiesman ◽  
Benjamin Iuliano ◽  
Claudio Gratton
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Landscape Heterogeneity ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Metapopulation Model ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Temporal Variance ◽  
Basal Resources ◽  
Predator Abundance

AbstractThe amount of habitat in a landscape is an important metric for evaluating the effects of land cover and land use on biodiversity and ecosystem services, yet it fails to capture complex temporal dimensions of resource availability that could be consequential for species population dynamics. If ephemeral resources across multiple habitat patches are synchronously available, resource gaps could be detrimental to population growth. In contrast, asynchronously available resources create a mosaic of temporally complementary resources that mobile organisms can track across the landscape. Knowledge is especially lacking on the relevance of temporal complementation for tri-trophic interactions and biological pest control. Here we use a spatially-explicit predator-prey metapopulation model to test the effect of different spatiotemporal resource patterns on insect predators and their prey. We examined prey and predator responses in model landscapes that varied in both the amount and temporal variability of basal vegetation resources. Further, we examined cases where prey comprised either a single generalist species or two specialist species that use different resources available either early or late in the growing season. We found that predators and generalist prey benefitted from lower temporal variance of basal resources, which increased both of their landscape-scale abundances. However, increasing the amount of basal resources also increased the variability of generalist prey populations, resulting in a negative correlation between basal resource amount and predator abundance. Specialist prey, on the other hand, did not benefit from less temporally variable in basal resources, since they were restricted by habitat type while also suffering greater predation. Predators feeding on specialists achieved greater prey suppression in landscapes with less temporally variable resources. Our simulations demonstrate the joint importance of landscape-scale temporal dynamics of resources and resource amount in understanding how landscape heterogeneity influences biodiversity and ecosystem services such as the biological control of agricultural pests.

scholarly journals Biosphere Reserves - Suggested Model of the Institution of Commons (Case study of the Šumava Biosphere Reserve)

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Těšitel ◽  
Drahomíra Kušová
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Suggested Model ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Biosphere Reserves

Biosphere Reserves - Suggested Model of the Institution of Commons (Case study of the Šumava Biosphere Reserve)An attempt to address the interdependence between human economies and natural ecosystems has been articulated in ecological economics, among others, in terms of ecosystem services. Introducing ecosystem services yields positive result in the sense that the theoretical concept of cultural landscape has been complemented by the more or less effective political scheme, suitable as a basis for practical decision making. Nevertheless, practical management of ecosystem services on landscape scale is a rather complex task. The concept ofinstitution of commonscould be suggested to be used when dealing with the problem of implementation of ecosystem services concept in practice. The overall aim of the contribution is to discuss whether or not, or to which extent,UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the modern strategy in biodiversity conservation backed up by internationally agreed upon conventions, can be used as a model for institution of commons in landscape-scale nature protection. The discussion is based on empirical evidence gained within a long-term research conducted in the Šumava Biosphere Reserve, Czech Republic.

scholarly journals Mixed effects of ecological intensification on natural pest control providers: a short-term study for biotic homogenization in winter wheat fields

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8746
Author(s):  
Zoltán Elek ◽  
Jana Růžičková ◽  
Réka Ádám ◽  
Krisztina Bereczki ◽  
Gergely Boros ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Winter Wheat ◽  
Pest Control ◽  
Natural Enemies ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Biotic Homogenization ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Ecological Intensification ◽  
Field Management ◽  
Invertebrate Assemblages ◽  
Aphid Abundance

Agricultural intensification is one of the major drivers of biotic homogenization and has multiple levels ranging from within-field management intensity to landscape-scale simplification. The enhancement of invertebrate assemblages by establishing new, semi-natural habitats, such as set-aside fields can improve biological pest control in adjacent crops, and mitigate the adverse effect of biotic homogenization. In this study we aimed to examine the effects of ecological intensification in winter wheat fields in Hungary. We tested how pests and their natural enemies were affected at different spatial scales by landscape composition (proportion of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding matrix), configuration (presence of adjacent set-aside fields), and local field management practices, such as fertilizer (NPK) applications without applying insecticides. We demonstrated that at the local scale, decreased fertilizer usage had no direct effect either on pests or their natural enemies. Higher landscape complexity and adjacent semi-natural habitats seem to be the major drivers of decreasing aphid abundance, suggesting that these enhanced the predatory insect assemblages. Additionally, the high yield in plots with no adjacent set-aside fields suggests that intensive management can compensate for the lower yields on the extensive plots. Our results demonstrated that although complexity at the landscape scale was crucial for maintaining invertebrate assemblages, divergence in their response to pests and pathogens could also be explained by different dispersal abilities. Although the landscape attributes acted as dispersal filters in the organization of pest and pathogen assemblages in croplands, the presence of set-aside fields negatively influenced aphid abundance due to their between-field isolation effect.

scholarly journals Field Margin Vegetation in Tropical African Bean Systems Harbours Diverse Natural Enemies for Biological Pest Control in Adjacent Crops

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 6399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prisila A. Mkenda ◽  
Patrick A. Ndakidemi ◽  
Philip C. Stevenson ◽  
Sarah E. J. Arnold ◽  
Steven R. Belmain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pest Control ◽  
Natural Enemies ◽  
Natural Enemy ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Field Margins ◽  
Field Margin ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Sentinel Plants ◽  
Bean Crop ◽  
Control Service

Non-crop vegetation around farmland can be valuable habitats for enhancing ecosystem services but little is known of the importance of field margins in supporting natural enemies of insect pests in tropical agriculture. This study was conducted in smallholder bean fields in three elevation zones to assess the importance of field margin vegetation to natural enemy populations and movement to the bean crop for biological pest control. The pests and natural enemies were assessed using different coloured water pan traps (to ensure the capture of insects with different colour preferences) and the interactions of the two arthropod groups with the margin vegetation and their movement to the bean crop were monitored using fluorescent dye. Sentinel plants were used to assess predation and parasitism levels. A total of 5003 natural enemies were captured, more in the field margin than within the bean field for low and mid elevation zones, while in the high elevation zone, they were more abundant within the bean field. Pests were more abundant in the crop than margins for all the elevation zones. The use of a dye applied to margin vegetation demonstrated that common natural enemy taxa moved to the crop during the days after dye application. The proportion of dye-marked natural enemies (showing their origin to be margin vegetation) sampled from the crop suggest high levels of spatial flux in the arthropod assemblage. Aphid mortality rates (measured by prey removal and parasitism levels on sentinel plants) did not differ between the field edges and field centre in any of the three elevation zones, suggesting that for this pest taxon, the centre of the fields still receive comparable pest control service as in the field edges. This study found that field margins around smallholder bean fields are useful habitats to large numbers of natural enemy taxa that move to adjacent crops providing biological pest control service.

scholarly journals Local pesticide use intensity conditions landscape effects on biological pest control

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1904) ◽  
pp. 20182898 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Ricci ◽  
C. Lavigne ◽  
A. Alignier ◽  
S. Aviron ◽  
L. Biju-Duval ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Predation Rate ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Pesticide Use ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Biological Pest Control ◽  
Landscape Characteristics ◽  
Landscape Effects ◽  
Weed Seeds

Complex landscapes including semi-natural habitats are expected to favour natural enemies thereby enhancing natural pest biocontrol in crops. However, when considering a large number of situations, the response of natural biocontrol to landscape properties is globally inconsistent, a possible explanation being that local agricultural practices counteract landscape effects. In this study, along a crossed gradient of pesticide use intensity and landscape simplification, we analysed the interactive effects of landscape characteristics and local pesticide use intensity on natural biocontrol. During 3 years, using a set of sentinel prey (weed seeds, aphids and Lepidoptera eggs), biocontrol was estimated in 80 commercial fields located in four contrasted regions in France. For all types of prey excepted weed seeds, the predation rate was influenced by interactions between landscape characteristics and local pesticide use intensity. Proportion of meadow and length of interface between woods and crops had a positive effect on biocontrol of aphids where local pesticide use intensity was low but had a negative effect elsewhere. Moreover, the landscape proportion of suitable habitats for crop pests decreased the predation of sentinel prey, irrespectively of the local pesticide use intensity for weed seeds, but only in fields with low pesticide use for Lepidoptera eggs. These results show that high local pesticide use can counteract the positive expected effects of semi-natural habitats, but also that the necessary pesticide use reduction should be associated with semi-natural habitat enhancement to guarantee an effective natural biocontrol.

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