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Predators do not benefit from crop diversity but respond to configurational heterogeneity in wheat and cotton fields

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Abstract

Context

Manipulating crop diversity in the landscape has been suggested as a promising management option to enhance biocontrol but how crop diversity independently of other important aspects of landscape structure affects predator and pest abundances remain largely unexplored.

Objectives

Our study assessed the relative and interactive effects of crop composition and configuration on aphids and their generalist predators, i.e. ladybirds, spiders and lacewings.

Methods

We sampled arthropods in 47 cotton fields and 21 wheat fields in Hebei, China, located along three landscape gradients: crop diversity (Shannon diversity of crops ranging from 0.27 to 1.32 corresponding to a crop richness varying from 2 to 7 different crops), crop configurational (crop edge density varying from 0.0012 m/ha to 0.066 m/ha) and proportion of semi-natural habitats (varying from 0.5% to 56%).

Results

Crop diversity never had any effect on arthropod communities and we found no effect of the proportion of semi-natural habitats on natural enemies’ abundances. Aphid abundance was positively correlated with the proportion of semi-natural habitats both in cotton and wheat fields. Lacewing abundance benefited from configurational heterogeneity as abundances increased with crop edge density.

Conclusions

Our result provide evidence that crop diversity is probably not the best management option to enhance biocontrol of aphids in Chinese landscapes and confirms that the amount of semi-natural habitats in the landscape is a critical aspect shaping arthropod communities. It also indicates that manipulating crop edge density by promoting agricultural landscapes with small field size for instance can benefit natural enemies of crop pests.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for professors Bing Lui and Lu Yan Hui and for the students of the IPP CAAS for providing the data.

Funding

This work was supported by EUCLID project financed by H2020 program (Grant Number 633999).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Côte D’Azur, INRAE, CNRS, UMR ISA, 06000, Nice, France

    E. Thomine & N. Desneux

  2. INRAE, ISVV, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, UMR SAVE, 33883, Villenave d’Ornon, France

    A. Rusch

  3. Institute of Plant Protection Chinese, Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2 South Gate, 2 West Yuan Ming Yuan Road, Beijing, 100193, China

    N. Desneux

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  1. E. Thomine
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  2. A. Rusch
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  3. N. Desneux
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by ET and AR. The first draft of the manuscript was written by ET and all authors contributed to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to E. Thomine or N. Desneux.

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Thomine, E., Rusch, A. & Desneux, N. Predators do not benefit from crop diversity but respond to configurational heterogeneity in wheat and cotton fields. Landsc Ecol 38, 439–447 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01574-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01574-x

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