TY  - JOUR
A1  - Holzschuh, Andrea
A1  - Dainese, Matteo
A1  - Gonzalez-Varo, Juan P.
A1  - Mudri-Stojnic, Sonja
A1  - Riedinger, Verena
A1  - Rundlöf, Maj
A1  - Scheper, Jeroen
A1  - Wickens, Jennifer B.
A1  - Wickens, Victoria J.
A1  - Bommarco, Riccardo
A1  - Kleijn, David
A1  - Potts, Simon G.
A1  - Roberts, Stuart P. M.
A1  - Smith, Henrik G.
A1  - Vilà, Montserrat
A1  - Vujic, Ante
A1  - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf
T1  - Mass-flowering crops dilute pollinator abundance in agricultural landscapes across Europe
JF  - Ecology Letters
N2  - Mass-flowering crops (MFCs) are increasingly cultivated and might influence pollinator communities in MFC fields and nearby semi-natural habitats (SNHs). Across six European regions and 2 years, we assessed how landscape-scale cover of MFCs affected pollinator densities in 408 MFC fields and adjacent SNHs. In MFC fields, densities of bumblebees, solitary bees, managed honeybees and hoverflies were negatively related to the cover of MFCs in the landscape. In SNHs, densities of bumblebees declined with increasing cover of MFCs but densities of honeybees increased. The densities of all pollinators were generally unrelated to the cover of SNHs in the landscape. Although MFC fields apparently attracted pollinators from SNHs, in landscapes with large areas of MFCs they became diluted. The resulting lower densities might negatively affect yields of pollinator- dependent crops and the reproductive success of wild plants. An expansion of MFCs needs to be accompanied by pollinator-supporting practices in agricultural landscapes.
KW  - wild plant pollination
KW  - Colony growth
KW  - Densities
KW  - Context
KW  - crop pollination
KW  - Oilseed rape
KW  - Nesting resources
KW  - Bee abundance
KW  - Yield
KW  - Richness
KW  - Habitats
KW  - Agricultural intensification
KW  - agri-environment schemes
KW  - biofuels
KW  - ecosystem services
KW  - field boundaries
KW  - landscape compositionv
KW  - non-crop habitats
KW  - semi-natural habitats
KW  - spillover
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187356
VL  - 19
IS  - 10
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Dainese, Matteo
A1  - Schneider, Gudrun
A1  - Krauss, Jochen
A1  - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf
T1  - Complementarity among natural enemies enhances pest suppression
JF  - Scientific Reports
N2  - Natural enemies have been shown to be effective agents for controlling insect pests in crops. However, it remains unclear how different natural enemy guilds contribute to the regulation of pests and how this might be modulated by landscape context. In a field exclusion experiment in oilseed rape (OSR), we found that parasitoids and ground-dwelling predators acted in a complementary way to suppress pollen beetles, suggesting that pest control by multiple enemies attacking a pest during different periods of its occurrence in the field improves biological control efficacy. The density of pollen beetle significantly decreased with an increased proportion of non-crop habitats in the landscape. Parasitism had a strong effect on pollen beetle numbers in landscapes with a low or intermediate proportion of non-crop habitats, but not in complex landscapes. Our results underline the importance of different natural enemy guilds to pest regulation in crops, and demonstrate how biological control can be strengthened by complementarity among natural enemies. The optimization of natural pest control by adoption of specific management practices at local and landscape scales, such as establishing non-crop areas, low-impact tillage, and temporal crop rotation, could significantly reduce dependence on pesticides and foster yield stability through ecological intensification in agriculture.
KW  - ecosystem services
KW  - agroecology
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-158621
VL  - 7
ER  -