Understanding how landscape structure influences pest suppression in crop fields is critical for the design of sustainable agricultural landscapes.
New research shows that landscape configuration (spatial arrangement), in addition to composition, strongly affects natural enemy and pest populations, ultimately affecting crop yield.
Natural enemies tend to be more abundant in fine-grained landscapes (comprising smaller fields and habitat patches) and are influenced by the connectivity of crop fields to other habitat types.
Configuration effects on pest suppression depend on organismal traits and the relationships between spatial scales at which arthropods disperse and those of underlying landscape structure.
Landscape configuration can affect pest suppression through multiple indirect effect pathways, which need more investigation.
Arthropod predators and parasitoids attack crop pests, providing a valuable ecosystem service. The amount of noncrop habitat surrounding crop fields influences pest suppression, but synthesis of new studies suggests that the spatial configuration of crops and other habitats is similarly important. Natural enemies are often more abundant in fine-grained agricultural landscapes comprising smaller patches and can increase or decrease with the connectivity of crop fields to other habitats. Partitioning organisms by traits has emerged as a promising way to predict the strength and direction of these effects. Furthermore, our ability to predict configurational effects will depend on understanding the potential for indirect effects among trophic levels and the relationship between arthropod dispersal capability and the spatial scale of underlying landscape structure.
