Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition.

Area of Science:

• Agroecology
• Ecology
• Conservation Biology

Background:

• The concept of noncrop habitat enhancing pest control is a key agroecological paradigm.
• Existing research shows inconsistent effects of noncrop habitats on natural enemies and pest control.
• Heterogeneity in species responses may stem from biological factors or methodological variations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To globally model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage using a large pest-control database.
• To assess the impact of landscape composition on pest management services.
• To determine if noncrop habitat consistently benefits pest control and crop yields.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a comprehensive pest-control database with 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide.
• Modeled natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as functions of landscape composition.
• Analyzed variation within and across studies to identify consistent trends.

Main Results:

• Landscape composition explained significant variation within individual studies.
• However, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields showed inconsistent responses across studies.
• No consistent trend emerged for the positive or negative effects of noncrop habitat on pest management.

Conclusions:

• Surrounding noncrop habitat does not reliably improve pest management across diverse agricultural systems.
• Habitat conservation can potentially bolster production in some contexts but depress yields in others.
• Further research is needed to understand how local farm management and organismal biology modulate landscape effects for effective habitat conservation strategies.