Interannual landscape changes influence plant–herbivore–parasitoid interactions

By Carsten Thies, I. Steffan‐Dewenter, T. Tscharntke. 2008

98 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The effects of interannual changes in landscape composition on herbivory and biological control of pollen beetles on oilseed rape were experimentally tested. Parasitism by specialized parasitoids decreased following rape crop expansion, and increased following rape crop reduction, indicating interannual dilution and crowding effects. In contrast, herbivory by rape pollen beetles did not respond to these landscape changes due to crop rotation, supporting the concept that specialist natural enemies are more affected by changing environments than their host or prey. When expansion of rape crop area between years exceeded ∼5% of the landscape, parasitism rates dropped below a threshold value of about ∼35%, below which classical biological control has rarely been reported.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7365c3b5a540c5d987c8e3cf768c07c88790851d

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Does landscape composition affect pest abundance and their control by natural enemies? A review (2013, background): “…et al., 2004; 12 Letourneau and Goldstein, 2001; Marino and Landis, 1996; 13 Menalled et al., 2003; Menalled et al., 1999; Thies et al., 2003; 20 Thies et al., 2008; Thies and Tscharntke, 1999; Tscharntke et al., 2002) or increased predation in relation to woody areas (2 Bianchi et al., 2005).”
Landscape moderation of biodiversity patterns and processes ‐ eight hypotheses (2012, background): “Stronger effects on per cent parasitism than herbivory (Thies et al., 2008) support the idea that (i) concentration or dilution of interacting populations can be affected at different spatial scales and that (ii) higher trophic levels of specialists are more sensitive to disturbance and ecological…”
Aphids and their natural enemies are differently affected by habitat features at local and landscape scales (2012, background): “It has also been suggested that parasitoid populations are more strongly influenced by inter-annually changing crop mosaics than their herbivorous hosts (Thies et al., 2008).”