Habitat Management to Suppress Pest Populations: Progress and Prospects.
Habitat management involving manipulation of farmland vegetation can exert direct suppressive effects on pests and promote natural enemies. Advances in theory and practical techniques have allowed habitat management to become an important subdiscipline of pest management. Improved understanding of biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships means that researchers now have a firmer theoretical foundation on which to design habitat management strategies for pest suppression in agricultural systems, including landscape-scale effects. Supporting natural enemies with shelter, nectar, alternative prey/hosts, and pollen (SNAP) has emerged as a major research topic and applied tactic with field tests and adoption often preceded by rigorous laboratory experimentation. As a result, the promise of habitat management is increasingly being realized in the form of practical worldwide implementation. Uptake is facilitated by farmer participation in research and is made more likely by the simultaneous delivery of ecosystem services other than pest suppression.
State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China; email: ggurr@csu.edu.au.|Institute of Applied Ecology, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China.|Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation, Charles Sturt University, Orange, New South Wales 2800, Australia.
Geoff M
GM
Gurr
Bio-Protection Research Centre, Lincoln University, 7647 Canterbury, New Zealand.
Steve D
SD
Wratten
Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824.
Douglas A
DA
Landis
State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China; email: ggurr@csu.edu.au.|Institute of Applied Ecology, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China.
Minsheng
M
You
D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods*; D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D007313:Insecta; D010572:Pest Control, Biological / Q000379:methods*
agroecology; conservation biological control; ecological engineering; ecosystem services; habitat manipulation; natural enemy