Arthropod predator identity and evenness jointly shape the delivery of pest control services

Zulin Mei*, Jeroen Scheper, David Kleijn

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Maximizing the effectiveness of natural pest control requires a detailed understanding of how service delivery is affected by natural enemy community diversity and composition. Many studies have investigated the effects of natural enemy abundance and species richness on pest control. Studies examining the effects of evenness and species identity are fewer and have produced inconsistent results. Here we test the effects of arthropod predator community evenness and species identity on natural pest control by exposing aphid (Sitobion avenae) colonies in experimental cages to arthropod predator communities that had the same abundance and species richness but differed in evenness and dominant species. RESULTS: We found that the identity of the most dominant species in the arthropod predator community predominantly drove the pest control efficiency. However, additional to the effects of species identity, we also found a causal positive relationship between the evenness of arthropod predator communities and the suppression of pest growth. CONCLUSION: Our results provide support for the hypothesis that ecosystem service provision is generally a function of the abundance and efficiency of the most dominant species of the service-providing groups. This could partly explain why management practices aiming at promoting abundance of natural enemies often have mixed effects on pest control. Our results also demonstrate that diversity components such as evenness have important additional effects. However, in real-world ecosystems these effects may be obscured because evenness is generally confounded with abundance or species richness in natural enemy predator communities.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)569-576
JournalPest Management Science
Volume80
Issue number2
Early online date21 Sept 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2024

Keywords

  • cage experiment
  • Coccinella septempunctata
  • community composition
  • dominant species
  • natural enemy
  • Sitobion avenae

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Arthropod predator identity and evenness jointly shape the delivery of pest control services'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this