TY - JOUR

T1 - More pests but less pesticide applications: Ambivalent effect of landscape complexity on conservation biological control

AU - Zamberletti, Patrizia

AU - Sabir, Khadija

AU - Opitz, Thomas

AU - Bonnefon, Olivier

AU - Gabriel, Edith

AU - Papaïx, Julien

N1 - Funding Information: KS has been supported by the Erasmus+ - KA1 Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees Programme of the European Commission within the PLANT HEALTH Project. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

PY - 2021/11/8

Y1 - 2021/11/8

N2 - In agricultural landscapes, the amount and organization of crops and semi-natural habitats (SNH) have the potential to promote a bundle of ecosystem services due to their influence on ecological community at multiple spatio-temporal scales. SNH are relatively undisturbed and are often source of complementary resources and refuges, therefore supporting more diverse and abundant natural pest enemies. However, the nexus of SNH proportion and organization with pest suppression is not trivial. It is thus crucial to understand how the behavior of pest and natural enemy species, the underlying landscape structure, and their interaction, may influence conservation biological control (CBC). Here, we develop a generative stochastic landscape model to simulate realistic agricultural landscape compositions and configurations of fields and linear elements. Generated landscapes are used as spatial support over which we simulate a spatially explicit predator-prey dynamic model. We find that increased SNH presence boosts predator populations by sustaining high predator density that regulates and keeps pest density below the pesticide application threshold. However, predator presence over all the landscape helps to stabilize the pest population by keeping it under this threshold, which tends to increase pest density at the landscape scale. In addition, the joint effect of SNH presence and predator dispersal ability among hedge and field interface results in a stronger pest regulation, which also limits pest growth. Considering properties of both fields and linear elements, such as local structure and geometric features, provides deeper insights for pest regulation; for example, hedge presence at crop field boundaries clearly strengthens CBC. Our results highlight that the integration of species behaviors and traits with landscape structure at multiple scales is necessary to provide useful insights for CBC.

AB - In agricultural landscapes, the amount and organization of crops and semi-natural habitats (SNH) have the potential to promote a bundle of ecosystem services due to their influence on ecological community at multiple spatio-temporal scales. SNH are relatively undisturbed and are often source of complementary resources and refuges, therefore supporting more diverse and abundant natural pest enemies. However, the nexus of SNH proportion and organization with pest suppression is not trivial. It is thus crucial to understand how the behavior of pest and natural enemy species, the underlying landscape structure, and their interaction, may influence conservation biological control (CBC). Here, we develop a generative stochastic landscape model to simulate realistic agricultural landscape compositions and configurations of fields and linear elements. Generated landscapes are used as spatial support over which we simulate a spatially explicit predator-prey dynamic model. We find that increased SNH presence boosts predator populations by sustaining high predator density that regulates and keeps pest density below the pesticide application threshold. However, predator presence over all the landscape helps to stabilize the pest population by keeping it under this threshold, which tends to increase pest density at the landscape scale. In addition, the joint effect of SNH presence and predator dispersal ability among hedge and field interface results in a stronger pest regulation, which also limits pest growth. Considering properties of both fields and linear elements, such as local structure and geometric features, provides deeper insights for pest regulation; for example, hedge presence at crop field boundaries clearly strengthens CBC. Our results highlight that the integration of species behaviors and traits with landscape structure at multiple scales is necessary to provide useful insights for CBC.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119899290&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009559

DO - 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009559

M3 - Article

C2 - 34748536

AN - SCOPUS:85119899290

VL - 17

JO - PLoS Computational Biology

JF - PLoS Computational Biology

SN - 1553-734X

IS - 11

M1 - e1009559

ER -