The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Portrait of Henrik Smith. Photo.

Henrik Smith

Professor

Portrait of Henrik Smith. Photo.

Models of natural pest control : Towards predictions across agricultural landscapes

Author

  • Nikolaos Alexandridis
  • Glenn Marion
  • Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer
  • Matteo Dainese
  • Johan Ekroos
  • Heather Grab
  • Mattias Jonsson
  • Daniel S. Karp
  • Carsten Meyer
  • Megan E. O'Rourke
  • Mikael Pontarp
  • Katja Poveda
  • Ralf Seppelt
  • Henrik G. Smith
  • Emily A. Martin
  • Yann Clough
Show all

Summary, in English

Natural control of invertebrate crop pests has the potential to complement or replace conventional insecticide-based practices, but its mainstream application is hampered by predictive unreliability across agroecosystems. Inconsistent responses of natural pest control to changes in landscape characteristics have been attributed to ecological complexity and system-specific conditions. Here, we review agroecological models and their potential to provide predictions of natural pest control across agricultural landscapes. Existing models have used a multitude of techniques to represent specific crop-pest-enemy systems at various spatiotemporal scales, but less wealthy regions of the world are underrepresented. A realistic representation of natural pest control across systems appears to be hindered by a practical trade-off between generality and realism. Nonetheless, observations of context-sensitive, trait-mediated responses of natural pest control to land-use gradients indicate the potential of ecological models that explicitly represent the underlying mechanisms. We conclude that modelling natural pest control across agroecosystems should exploit existing mechanistic techniques towards a framework of contextually bound generalizations. Observed similarities in causal relationships can inform the functional grouping of diverse agroecosystems worldwide and the development of the respective models based on general, but context-sensitive, ecological mechanisms. The combined use of qualitative and quantitative techniques should allow the flexible integration of empirical evidence and ecological theory for robust predictions of natural pest control across a wide range of agroecological contexts and levels of knowledge availability. We highlight challenges and promising directions towards developing such a general modelling framework.

Department/s

  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group
  • Evolutionary ecology
  • Biodiversity

Publishing year

2021-09-03

Language

English

Publication/Series

Biological Control

Volume

163

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Ecology

Keywords

  • Crop
  • Ecological modelling
  • Land use
  • Landscape
  • Natural control
  • Pest

Status

Published

Research group

  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science
  • Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1049-9644