Prey Switching and Natural Pest Control Potential of Carabid Communities over the Winter Wheat Cropping Season

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00027006%3A_____%2F24%3A10177711" target="_blank" >RIV/00027006:_____/24:10177711 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/15/8/610/pdf?version=1723535128" target="_blank" >https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/15/8/610/pdf?version=1723535128</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects15080610" target="_blank" >10.3390/insects15080610</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Prey Switching and Natural Pest Control Potential of Carabid Communities over the Winter Wheat Cropping Season

Original language description

Simple Summary Carabids are abundant and diverse arthropods in agroecosystems and are well known for their generalist diet and therefore biocontrol potential. Most studies on carabids&apos; diet have focused on periods of peak pest infestations but their feeding habits through the cropping season are poorly known. In this study, we explored how carabids&apos; trophic interactions with pests (aphids and slugs) and alternative prey (spiders, earthworms and springtails) varied from the wheat seedling emergence to wheat ripening by analysing the prey DNA in their gut. Carabids seemed to switch between prey depending on their availability at the time, reaffirming carabids&apos; opportunistic diet. Regarding biocontrol, carabid taxa contributed complementarily to pest predation over the season and per pest taxon, highlighting the importance of favouring diversity in agroecosystems.Abstract To date, evaluating the diets of natural enemies like carabids has largely been limited to spatially explicit and short-term sampling. This leaves a knowledge gap for the intra-annual dynamics of carabid diets, and the provision and timing of delivery of natural pest control services. Season-long pitfall trapping of adult carabids was conducted in conventional winter wheat fields, from November 2018 to June 2019, in five French departments. Diagnostic Multiplex PCR of carabid gut contents was used to determine the dynamics of carabid diets. The overall detection rate of target prey DNA was high across carabid individuals (80%) but varied with the prey group. The rate of detection was low for pests, at 8.1% for slugs and 9.6% for aphids. Detection of intraguild predation and predation on decomposers was higher, at 23.8% for spiders, 37.9% for earthworms and 64.6% for springtails. Prey switching was high at the carabid community level, with pest consumption and intraguild predation increasing through the cropping season as the availability of these prey increased in the environment, while the detection of decomposer DNA decreased. Variation in diet through the cropping season was characterized by: (i) complementary predation on slug and aphid pests; and (ii) temporal complementarity in the predominant carabid taxa feeding on each pest. We hypothesize that natural pest control services delivered by carabids are determined by complementary contributions to predation by the different carabid taxa over the season.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

40106 - Agronomy, plant breeding and plant protection; (Agricultural biotechnology to be 4.4)

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Insects

ISSN

2075-4450

e-ISSN

2075-4450

Volume of the periodical

15

Issue of the periodical within the volume

8

Country of publishing house

CH - SWITZERLAND

Number of pages

14

Pages from-to

610

UT code for WoS article

001304766800001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85202635565