‘Tidy’ and ‘messy’ management alters natural enemy communities and pest control in urban agroecosystems
Fig 1
We implemented a ‘tidy’ and ‘messy’ manipulation in eight urban community gardens in the California Central coast.
Example of the ‘tidy’ manipulation (a), with images taken before (b) and after (c) the manipulation; example of the ‘messy’ manipulation (d), with images taken before (e) and after (f) the manipulation. Images b, c, e, f are images taken from a compact commercial multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used to carry out autopiloted flights over the gardens for an aerial view of the manipulation. For panels b, c, e, and f, white areas are vegetation, green areas are bare soil, and pink areas are impermeable material such as wood, mulch, thatch, or straw.