Ndakidemi, Baltazar, Mbega, Ernest, Ndakidemi, Patrick A, Belmain, Steven R. ORCID: 0000-0002-5590-7545, Arnold, Sarah ORCID: 0000-0001-7345-0529, Woolley, Victoria ORCID: 0000-0002-9439-6856 and Stevenson, Philip ORCID: 0000-0002-0736-3619 (2022) Plant-rich field margins influence natural predators of aphids more than intercropping in common bean. Insects, 13 (7):56. ISSN 2075-4450 (Online) (doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13070569)

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Abstract

Field margins support important ecosystem services including natural pest regulation. We inves-tigated the influence of field margins on the spatial and temporal distribution of natural enemies (NEs) of bean pests in smallholder farming systems. We sampled NEs from high and low plant diversity bean fields using sweep netting and coloured sticky traps, comparing monocropped and intercropped farms. NEs collected from within crops included predatory bugs, lacewings, pred-atory flies, parasitic flies, parasitic wasps, lady beetles, and a range of other predatory beetles; with the most dominant group being parasitic wasps. Overall, high plant diversity fields had a higher number of NEs than low-diversity fields, regardless of sampling methods. The field mar-gin had a significantly higher number of lacewings, parasitic wasps, predatory bugs, syrphid flies, and other predatory beetles relative to the crop, but beneficial insects were collected throughout the fields. However, we observed marginally higher populations of NEs in intercrop-ping than in monocropping although the effect was not significant in both low and high plant di-versity fields. We recommend smallholder farmers protect the field margins for the added benefit of natural pest regulation in their fields.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article belongs to the Special Issue Insects and Ecosystem Service Provision
Uncontrolled Keywords:	natural enemies; predators; parasitoids; conservation biological control; field margin; Phaseolus vulgaris
Subjects:	Q Science > QL Zoology S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) S Agriculture > SB Plant culture
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute > Agriculture, Health & Environment Department
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	24 Jun 2022 08:44
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/36693

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