Artificial shelters as dual-purpose tools for monitoring natural enemies and providing microhabitats in orchards

Natural enemies provide essential pest control services, but their decline in agricultural landscapes threatens the sustainability of crop protection. In orchards, integrated pest management (IPM) depends not only on pest surveillance, but also on reliable monitoring of beneficial arthropods. However, practical tools for this purpose remain scarce.

We tested artificial cardboard shelters as a low-cost, non-lethal method for year-round monitoring of natural enemies in temperate apple orchards. Two shelter types (roll and tape) were evaluated at different tree positions and compared with beating samples. Roll shelters, especially when placed on trunks, consistently captured more spiders and other beneficial arthropods than tape shelters. Importantly, the presence of shelters did not reduce the abundance or richness of free-living canopy arthropods. Seasonal dynamics were clearly detected in Voják orchard, where earwigs dominated the 'other beneficial arthropods' group: spiders dominated shelters during winter, whereas earwigs were most abundant in summer.

Cardboard shelters proved to be effective and practical tools for monitoring key predator groups in orchards. Their integration into IPM programs could provide valuable information for better assessment of natural enemy activity, thereby supporting the optimization of pesticide use, and more sustainable orchard management. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.