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Decline in species richness as well as changes in community evenness or functional diversity have been hypothesised to jointly affect ecosystem functioning. However, disentangling the relative effects of these changes in community structure is hard as these different aspects often covary with species richness in real‐world ecosystems. In this study, we investigated the individual and interactive effects of functional diversity and community evenness of predators on the level of control of herbivorous prey.Using a highly replicated mesocosm experiment, we crossed three levels of functional diversity of arthropod predators with two levels of community evenness while controlling for the effect of species richness. Using this experimental setting, we hypothesised that the effect size of functional diversity of predators depends on community evenness. We expected a positive effect of functional diversity of predators on top‐down control at high level of community evenness while we thought that species identity and their associated traits should drive most of the effect on top‐down control at low level of community evenness.Our results did not provide any evidence for an interaction between functional diversity and community evenness nor any beneficial effect of increased functional diversity overall on predation rates of herbivorous prey. In addition, our results revealed that species and functional identity drives most of the effects of predator community composition on top‐down control of their prey in our study system. Assemblages composed of active hunters with low handling time and no starvation ability tended to have the highest impacts on prey biomass.By indicating that top‐down control of herbivorous prey by arthropod predators is mainly driven by species and functional identity and not by functional diversity, our study provides insights into the consequences of ongoing species loss on ecosystem functioning. Future research should now explore the predictability of trophic interactions based on functional traits of predator and herbivorous prey to anticipate the consequences of changes in species composition on ecosystem functioning. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, and at global scales, vineyard landscapes have experienced a profound intensification of management. These socio-ecosystems are now facing major environmental, agronomical and economic issues that challenge their future sustainability. In this context, implementing agroecological management of these landscapes is no longer an alternative, and multiple lines of evidence demonstrate the central role of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services for the future functioning of these landscapes. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of this evidence, indicate major gaps in our current knowledge and highlight how biodiversity could become a major asset in the design of multifunctional vineyard landscapes in the context of global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drosophila suzukii is an invasive pest which became a serious threat to stone and berry fruit production in Europe. Knowledge about the host range of this pest and the effect of the succession of available hosts over time is however lacking in vineyard landscapes. Our study aimed to evaluate the host range of D. suzukii throughout the year in a vineyarddominated area. We assessed egg deposition and emergence on nine wild and cultivated plant species sampled in twenty vineyard landscapes during two years. The temporal dynamics of D. suzukii presence was observed on five fruit species (Viscum album L., Prunus avium L., Sambucus nigra L., Rubus fruticosus L. aggr. and Vitis vinifera L. cv. Merlot) with different phenologies. Infestations on host plants depended on the season and the proportion of other fruits species in the landscape around the vineyard plots. The data collected enabled us to provide estimates of the population dynamics among different hosts and generations of the pest and to propose a pattern of temporal succession of host plant species adapted to our regional and agroecological context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High plant biodiversity and landscape food provision stability is known to have a positive impact on biocontrol services provided by natural enemies. However, few studies have assessed how differential spatial and temporal crop richness actually impact biocontrol services, and notably how natural enemies may spill-over among crops. Within this framework, using a four-cage maze system under laboratory conditions, we evaluated the effect of a diversified crop system (four crops, namely cotton, tomato, squash and soybean) and low diversified crop systems (one single crop), on the generalist predator Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) and its predation capacity on aphids. The system varied food availability both in space, i.e. different cages, and in time, i.e. different dates of resources implementation. In general, the effects of crops on the natural enemies' traits observed in the diversified crop system resulted from the average effects of the individual low diversified crop systems; the impact of the predator was highly dependent on the plant. Low diversified crop systems actually proved to be either very suitable for the predator's development (tomato and squash), or not at all (soybean and cotton), but inversely suitable in reducing pest population with lower efficacy in tomato and squash and higher efficacy in soybean and cotton. The spillover of the ladybird was strongest in the squash low diversified crop system and lowest in the cotton one, other systems showing intermediate spillover values. In the diversified crop system, the ladybird presence was always closely related to plant presence, and aphid populations were maintained at a stable population increase. Still, the predator was also found in cages lacking plants, as opposed to the low diversified crop systems; this hinted at the potential of the highly diversified crop system to promote ladybird dispersal and increase foraging activity. We demonstrate that increasing crop diversity in agroecosystems may help promote biocontrol services provided by H. axyridis by promoting its spillover between crops (e.g. while the plants are senescing and/or when they are harvested). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving our understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services is crucial for the development of sustainable agriculture. We introduce a novel framework that is based on the identification of indicator species for single or multiple ecosystem services across taxonomic groups based on indicator species analyses. We utilize multi-species community data (unlike previous single species approaches) without giving up information about the identity of species in our framework (unlike previous species richness approaches). We compiled a comprehensive community dataset including abundances of 683 invertebrate, vertebrate and plant species to identify indicator species that were either positively or negatively related to biological control, diversity of red-listed species or crop yield in agricultural landscapes in southern Sweden. Our results demonstrate that some taxonomic groups include significantly higher percentages of indicator species for these ecosystem services. Spider communities for example included a higher percentage of significant positive indicator species for biological control than ground or rove beetle communities. Bundles of indicator species for the analysed ecosystem service potentials usually included species that could be linked to the respective ecosystem service based on their functional role in local communities. Several of these species are conspicuous enough to be monitored by trained amateurs and could be used in bundles that are either crucial for the provision of individual ecosystem services or indicate agricultural landscapes with high value for red-listed species or crop yields. The use of bundles of characteristic indicator species for the simultaneous assessment of ecosystem services may reduce the amount of labour, time and cost in future assessments. In addition, future analysis using our framework in other ecosystems or with other subsets of ecosystem services and taxonomic groups will improve our understanding of service-providing species in local communities. In any case, expert knowledge is needed to select species from the identified subsets of significant indicator species and these species should be validated by existing data or additional sampling prior to being used for ecosystem service monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biological control of crop pests is a major ecosystem service affected by several variables acting at multiple spatial scales. Among these variables, heterogeneity at the habitat and landscape scales are known key drivers of trophic interactions and pest density in agroecosystems. However, studies that try to disentangle their relative effects in perennial cropping systems are scarce and nothing is known about their impacts on insect pest density and pesticide applications., We examined the effect of heterogeneity at these two scales on grape moths, one of the most damaging insect pests in European vineyards, and their biological control in 20 vineyards during three consecutive years. We used local vegetation management and the proportion of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape as proxies of heterogeneity at the habitat and landscape scales. Grape moth density was measured over time, as well as biological control services provided by different groups: birds, invertebrate predators, parasitoids and entomopathogenic fungi., Over the 3 years, grape moth density was mainly determined by local heterogeneity, with significantly fewer larvae of the first generation established in vineyards with full compared to partial grass cover., Despite these effects, biological control of grape moths was not primarily affected by local vegetation management but by landscape heterogeneity, and the direction of this effect varied over time. Notably, predation by birds increased with landscape heterogeneity in spring, depending on local vegetation management, while attacks by pathogenic fungi decreased with landscape heterogeneity during winter., Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that bottom-up processes related to habitat heterogeneity drive grape moth occurrence much more than top-down processes. These results have important implications for the ecological intensification of vineyard landscapes. We found that maintaining full grass cover within vineyards reduced grape moth density to a level below common intervention thresholds. Landscape heterogeneity in the close vicinity of vineyards contributed to improved biological pest control by birds, but depended on local vegetation management. Moreover, opposing effects of landscape management on biological pest control services over time revealed that strategies based only on manipulating landscape heterogeneity might not be the optimal option to limit grape moth density in vineyards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insectivorous birds are increasingly recognized for the crucial pest control services they provide to agroecosystems. While both the foraging activity and functional diversity of birds are enhanced by multiscale habitat heterogeneity, little is known about how these relationships may influence avian top-down control of insects. Specifically, interactive effects of bird community structure and habitat heterogeneity on pest control across spatial scales have rarely been explored., We sampled bird communities and measured avian predation on plasticine model prey, as a proxy for lepidopteran pest control, in 20 vineyards of south-western France. Vineyards differed both in sward heterogeneity at the local scale and amount of surrounding semi-natural habitats at the landscape scale. Functional diversity metrics and community-weighted mean traits were computed for bird communities based on a species-trait table including diet, foraging method, nesting site, migration strategy, laying date, home range size, clutch size and body mass. We used mixed models to test for the interacting effects of habitat heterogeneity and bird functional diversity on avian predation rates of plasticine prey., Contrary to expectations, bird functional diversity decreased with landscape-scale heterogeneity, but was higher in vineyards managed with heterogeneous sward structures. In contrast, foliage-gleaning insectivores were more abundant in landscapes supporting more semi-natural habitats, suggesting an increase in their contribution to pest control along the landscape heterogeneity gradient. Accordingly, we found that avian predation on plasticine prey increased with bird functional evenness both in more heterogeneous vineyards at the local scale and in landscape mosaics supporting more semi-natural habitats., Synthesis and applications. Our study demonstrates that habitat heterogeneity at both local and landscape scales influenced avian insectivory in vineyard agroecosystems by interacting with bird community structure. It provides important insights for ecological intensification in vineyards, pointing out that management options need to be adapted to both the functional composition of local bird communities and landscape context. We suggest that both on-field and off-field management can be used to enhance natural pest control services provided by birds in vineyards, especially by favouring sward heterogeneity and patches of semi-natural habitats within large vineyard stands at the landscape scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence has shown that a consideration of multiple drivers is important if we want to understand how ecosystem functioning will respond to global change., In the present study, we used a substitutive approach to examine how two major components of global change, warming and predator diversity, affect the top-down control of two phytophagous insect pests. Predator assemblages were created using a substitutive design to give three single-species treatments (low diversity) and one three-species treatment (high diversity) under two temperature treatments (current seasonal temperature and an increase of +3° C over current temperatures)., The results obtained indicate a shift from substitutive to complementarity effects among predatory species with experimental warming. Experimental warming revealed complementarity between the predatory species in diverse assemblages because higher predation rates on both prey species were found in the high diversity treatment compared with what was expected based on low diversity treatments at the same temperature., Our analyses of prey selectivity provided evidence that resource-niche partitioning is involved in the emergence of functional complementarity under warming. The present study highlights the importance of maintaining diverse predator assemblages if we want to increase natural pest control services in agroecosystems and reduce dependence on agrochemicals in a climate change context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several larval parasitoid species are natural enemies of the tortricid moths of European vineyards, including the most damaging of these pests, Lobesia botrana . Over the last few years, DNA-based methods have been used for more rapid and accurate detection and identification of parasitoids. In this study, we developed a PCR-RFLP analysis method targeting a mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene fragment after digestion with the restriction enzyme ApoI , for discrimination between four parasitoid species of Lobesia botrana : Campoplex capitator , Exochus tibialis , Elachertus spp. (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae) and Phytomyptera nigrina (Diptera, Tachinidae). We assessed the accuracy of this method using populations of L. botrana sampled from eight vineyards located in South-West of France. On a total of 547 L. botrana larvae collected, 252 were analyzed for parasitism using our molecular method whereas the remaining 295 were reared to assess parasitism rates based on emergence. Our PCR-RLFP method showed a mean parasitism rate of 25%, with values ranging from 3% to 50% across vineyards. The levels of parasitism estimated by this method were about three times those estimated after emergence and identification (7.3%). This difference suggests that mortality may occur during parasitoid development, possibly due to encapsulation. Our method revealed that the two dominating parasitoid species were Campoplex capitator (90%) and Phytomyptera nigrina (9%), whereas the emergence of parasitoids found only C. capitator after taxonomical identification. This study revealed that the PCR-RFLP analysis is an appropriate and reliable tool for estimating the biological control potential of a diverse community of parasitoids on the main tortricid moth of grapevine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of evidence suggests that landscape management may limit the use of pesticides in agricultural systems. However, this hypothesis is largely based on studies about biological pest control service, and the effects of landscape context on pesticide use remain poorly investigated. Here, we investigated how the proportion of host crops and semi-natural habitats affected the local use of fungicides and insecticides in the most treated crops in France, i.e., apple orchards and vineyards. Using pesticide use information at the national level from 64 apple orchards and 138 vineyards monitored between 2014 and 2019, we investigated how local field size, several aspects of landscape context (proportion of host crops, share of organic host crop, proportion of woodlands and grasslands) as well as the weather context affect the frequency, timing and diversity of local fungicide and insecticide use. Our results highlight that landscape-scale management could reduce the use of insecticides in agricultural landscapes. In vineyards, a lower use of insecticides was observed in small fields or landscapes composed of a high proportion of woodlands, while in orchards a lower local use of insecticides was found in landscapes with a high share of organic orchards. Fungicide use was mainly affected by the weather context in both apple orchards and vineyards, with more fungicide use in humid and warm weather. However, effects of vineyard size and grassland proportion on the date of the first spray suggest that these two variables may impact pathogen spatial dynamics, a topic that needs further investigations. Landscape-scale management options highlighted in our study may contribute to the design of functional agricultural landscapes minimising pesticide use. [Display omitted] • The effects of landscape context on pesticide use in perennial crops remains poorly investigated • Pesticide use was monitored in 64 apple orchards and 138 vineyards from 2014 to 2019 and related to landscape composition • Insecticide use was lower in vineyards for small fields or wooded landscapes and in orchards within many organic orchards • Fungicide use was mainly affected by humid and warm weathers and not by landscape context • Landscape-scale management options can help reduce insecticide use in agricultural landscapes [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies show that landscape simplification reduces abundance and diversity of natural enemies in agroecosystems, but its effect on natural pest control remains poorly quantified. Further, natural enemy impacts on pest populations have usually been estimated for a limited number of taxa and have not considered interactions among predator species. In a quantitative synthesis with data collected from several cropping systems in Europe and North America, we analyzed how the level and within-field spatial stability of natural pest control services was related to the simplification of the surrounding landscape. All studies used aphids as a model species and exclusion cages to measure aphid pest control. Landscape simplification was quantified by the proportion of cultivated land within a 1 km radius around each plot. We found a consistent negative effect of landscape simplification on the level of natural pest control, despite interactions among enemies. Average level of pest control was 46% lower in homogeneous landscapes dominated by cultivated land, as compared with more complex landscapes. Landscape simplification did not affect the amount of positive or negative interactions among ground-dwelling and vegetation-dwelling predators, or the within-field stability of pest control. Our synthesis demonstrates that agricultural intensification through landscape simplification has negative effects on the level of natural pest control with important implications for management to maintain and enhance ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. Specifically, preserving and restoring semi-natural habitats emerges as a fundamental first step to maintain and enhance pest control services provided by predatory arthropods to agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural intensification is recognised as a major driver of biodiversity loss in human-modified landscapes. Several agro-environmental measures at different spatial scales have been suggested to mitigate the negative impact of intensification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The effect of these measures on the functional structure of service-providing communities remains, however, largely unexplored. Using two distinct landscape designs, we examined how the management options of organic farming at the field scale and crop diversification at the landscape level affect the taxonomic and functional structure of generalist predator communities and how these effects vary along a landscape complexity gradient. Organic farming as well as landscapes with longer and more diversified crop rotations enhanced the activity-density of spiders and rove beetles, but not the species richness or evenness. Our results indicate that the two management options affected the functional composition of communities, as they primarily enhanced the activity-density of functionally similar species. The two management options increased the functional similarity between spider species in regards to hunting mode and habitat preference. Organic farming enhanced the functional similarity of rove beetles. Management options at field and landscape levels were generally more important predictors of community structure when compared to landscape complexity. Our study highlights the importance of considering the functional composition of generalist predators in order to understand how agro-environmental measures at various scales shape community assemblages and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Carabid species richness or evenness did not differ in samples separated by 24 years. [•] Carabid community and trait composition changed after mitigation of intensification. [•] More omnivorous, mobile, spring breeding, and large species were found after mitigation. [•] A functional approach provided a more mechanistic view of carabid response to land use changes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Increasing landscape complexity can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services in agroecosystems. However, policies based on conversion of arable land into semi-natural habitats to increase landscape complexity and ecosystem services can be difficult to implement. Although it appears to be a promising management option, nothing is known about the effect of increasing landscape diversity through crop rotations on the delivery of ecosystem services., In this study, we examined how landscape complexity and crop rotation intensity in the landscape at different spatial scales affect the flow and the stability of natural pest control services in barley fields using manipulative cage experiments., Exclusion experiments revealed that natural enemies can have a strong impact on aphid population growth and that the delivery of pest control services is strongly dependent on the landscape context., We found that the overall level of pest control increased with landscape complexity and that this effect was independent of crop rotation intensity. In addition, the within-field stability in pest control services increased with crop rotation intensity in the landscape, although stability in parasitism rates decreased., Multiple spatial scales analyses showed that the mean level of natural pest control was best predicted by landscape complexity at the 0·5-km and the 1-km spatial scales. The stability in overall pest control decreased with proportion of ley at the 2·5-km and the 3-km spatial scales., Synthesis and applications. Our study disentangled, for the first time, the relative effects of landscape complexity and crop rotation intensity on the delivery of an ecosystem service. We show that combined management of semi-natural habitat and crop rotation can stabilize and enhance natural pest control in agricultural landscapes. Our findings have important implications in terms of management options to maintain and enhance ecosystem services in agroecosystems. They suggest that conservation of heterogeneous landscapes, characterized by a higher proportion of semi-natural habitats such as pastures and relatively small fields, is essential for maintaining and enhancing effective biological control in agroecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of plant richness to enhance the presence, biodiversity and efficiency of natural enemies in agricultural systems has largely been studied and demonstrated these last decades. Planting and preserving non-crop plants or manipulating crop richness in fields are practices that have proven their efficiency. However, the impact of crop-richness continuity in space and time on pests and natural enemies at a landscape scale remains poorly studied. In a two-year study, we assessed the effect of crop richness (single crop vs. multiple crops) on pest and natural enemy abundance and spillover in a field experiment in north-east China. Overall, we found crop diversity had a limited impact on pest and natural enemy abundance at the spatial scale tested (0.025 vs. 0.2 ha). The total pest and natural enemy abundances were not different between single-crop and multi-crop plots in either year, and the community composition at the functional group level was mostly determined by the crop but not crop diversity. However, we found that crop diversity influenced the numeric response of ladybirds to aphids in wheat; their negative response (higher abundance where aphid abundance was lower, suggesting predation) was attenuated in multi-crop plots (no correlation of aphid and ladybird abundance, suggesting the use of alternative resources). This pattern was not found in maize. Finally, crop succession enhanced the spillover of ladybirds from wheat and maize to cotton plots but with limited benefits for aphid control. Because of these limited impacts, we hypothesized that crop diversity may benefit natural enemy populations and enhance pest control at larger spatial scales; while we found similar abundances of ladybirds between our small (0.025–0.2 ha) plots and in large (2 ha) close-by cotton fields, aphid abundances were more than ten times higher in large cotton fields. Our study highlights the need to accurately estimate the spatial scale at which crop biodiversity may benefit pest control, in relation to the ecology of the target pest and natural enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flavescence dorde (FD) is a quarantine disease threatening European vineyards. Its management is based on mandatory insecticide treatments and the uprooting of infected plants identified during annual surveys. Field surveys are currently not optimized because the drivers affecting FD spread in vineyard landscapes remain poorly understood. We collated a georeferenced dataset of FD detection, collected from 34.581 vineyard plots over 5 years iii the South West France wine region. Spatial models fitted with integrated nested Laplace approximation were used to identify local and landscape factors affecting FD detection and infection. Our analysis highlights the importance of sampling period on FD detection and of local practices and landscape context on FD infection, At field scale, altitude and cultivar choice were the main factors affecting FD infection. In particular. the odds ratio of FD infection in fields planted with the susceptible Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabemet Franc. or Muscadelle varieties were approximately twice those in fields planted with the less susceptible Mei-lot. Field infection was also affected by the field's immediate surroundings (within a circle with a radius of 150 to 200 m), corresponding to landscapes of 7 to 12 ha. In particular, the probability of FD infection increased with the proportions of forest and urban land mici with the proportion of susceptible cultivars, demonstrating that the cultivar composition impacts FD epidemiology at landscape scale. The satisfactory predictive performance of the model for identifying districts with a prevalence of FD detection >10% of the fields suggests that it could be used to target areas in which future surveys would be most valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A considerable body of evidence has demonstrated the positive impact of the diversity of plant species on biological control of pests at the field scale. However, very few studies have assessed the effect of crop diversity on natural enemy performance and pest control. In order to test our hypothesis that crop diversity could increase natural enemy development and performance, we examined the mechanisms underlying the effect of two types of crop succession, i.e., multiple-crop succession (tomato, squash and soybean) and mono-crop succession (each crop alone), on population dynamics, predation capacity and spillover of Nesidiocoris tenuis Reuter (Hemiptera: Miridae) in a greenhouse experiment. We found that (1) the polyculture supported lower population growth of N. tenuis and lower predation rates of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) eggs compared to tomato and squash monocultures, but that correspondingly (2) the predator performed better on the polyculture than on the soybean monoculture. These results revealed that crop identity within the succession is a major factor in determining population dynamics and biological control. We found that compared to soybean monoculture, the presence of soybean Glycine max L. (Fabales: Fabaceae) in the polyculture treatment reduced the population dynamics of the mirid predator but increased biological control. This result suggests that non-host crops in a polycultural succession could benefit from the natural enemy populations that were increased by other suitable crops in the succession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biological control of crop pests by naturally occurring arthropods depends on the entire community of natural enemies, but generalist predators and parasitoids are rarely considered in the same study. Also, the level of biological control in the field is affected by both within-field and landscape scale management. A multi-taxa approach that integrates multiple scales of management is needed to understand drivers for pest mortality. We examined local (weed cover and soil characteristics) and landscape (proportions of semi-natural and oilseed rape habitat) effects on natural enemy communities and biological control of pollen beetles in 15 oilseed rape (OSR) fields in Sweden. We found that agricultural intensification at the local (low weed cover) and landscape scale (low proportion of semi-natural area) increased evenness of generalist predators, but had no effect on the densities of pests and their natural enemies. This suggests that the generalist predators in OSR are well adapted to crop lands, at least within the examined gradient. Increasing OSR in the landscape decreased parasitoid densities and increased pest density, indicating a potential loss of pest control services by specialist natural enemies in landscapes with a high proportion of OSR. Finally, pollen beetle mortality increased with ground-dwelling generalist predator abundance and soil clay content. Parasitism rates did not affect pest mortality, which is interesting as parasitoids have been considered major control agents in OSR. The hypothesis that increasing semi-natural habitat in the landscape enhances natural enemy abundances and species richness in agricultural landscapes was not supported. Local measures targeting generalist predators appear as a reasonable strategy to maximize pollen beetle control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the response of biodiversity to organic farming is crucial to design more sustainable agriculture. While it is known that organic farming benefits biodiversity on average, large variability in the effects of this farming system exists. Moreover, it is not clear how different practices modulate the performance of organic farming for biodiversity conservation. In this study, we investigated how the abundance and taxonomic richness of multiple species groups responds to certified organic farming and conventional farming in vineyards. Our analyses revealed that farming practices at the field scale are more important drivers of community abundance than landscape context. Organic farming enhanced the abundances of springtails (+ 31.6%) and spiders (+ 84%), had detrimental effects on pollinator abundance (− 11.6%) and soil microbial biomass (− 9.1%), and did not affect the abundance of ground beetles, mites or microarthropods. Farming practices like tillage regime, insecticide use and soil copper content drove most of the detected effects of farming system on biodiversity. Our study revealed varying effects of organic farming on biodiversity and clearly indicates the need to consider farming practices to understand the effects of farming systems on farmland biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conserving functionally diverse bird communities in European farmland is becoming critical, with no exception for regions of wine production. Management intensification combined with the loss of semi‐natural habitats in wine‐growing landscapes has led to a long‐term decline not only in birds of conservation concern but also in once common insectivores and seed eaters. These declines are expected not only to threaten key ecological services provided by vineyard birds, such as pest or weed control, but also their cultural significance.We analysed how organic management and landscape heterogeneity affected taxonomic and functional diversity of 334 bird communities from 12 regions of the three main wine‐producing European countries (France, Italy and Spain). We further modelled the responses of community‐level metrics measuring mean habitat specialization and bird song attractiveness to humans, as well as cumulative abundances of functional insectivores, seed and grape eaters to account for individual avian functions.We found that organic viticulture enhanced bird functional diversity and individual functions, but that its positive effect partially depended on grass cover management in the inter‐rows and landscape heterogeneity. Woodland cover and landscape compositional heterogeneity increased both taxonomic and functional diversity of bird communities, as well as functional insectivory. Landscape configurational heterogeneity also increased functional diversity and mean song attractiveness of bird communities.Overall, both bird diversity and functions were enhanced by higher landscape heterogeneity, especially in organic vineyards. However, mean habitat specialization decreased with woodland cover and configurational heterogeneity, meaning that open habitat specialists preferred more even landscapes with high vineyard cover.Synthesis and applications. Our study highlights the benefits of combining organic management and partial grass cover at the field level and promoting interfaces between vineyards and semi‐natural habitats at the landscape level to sustain multifunctional bird communities in wine‐producing European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how community composition of service‐providing organisms affects ecosystem functioning is a key challenge in ecology. Although it has been proposed that taxonomic diversity and functional traits mediate this relationship, how several facets of community structure affect the delivery of key ecosystem services remains to be explored.In this study, we investigated how abundance, taxonomic richness as well as the shape of biomass distribution in predator communities affect biological pest control services in vineyard landscapes. Our analyses were based on a dataset combining samples of arthropod predators, measures of predation rates of grape pests and characterization of environmental covariables for 42 fields located in South‐Western France.We found that beside the abundance or the taxonomic richness of predators, the shape of biomass distribution (mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of the distribution) influences the level of biological control. Predator communities largely dominated by low biomass species provided the bulk of biological control services. Lower levels of predation resulted from increased proportions of large biomass species and more evenly distributed biomass values in the communities.Our results indicate that the top‐down control provided by low biomass species decreases as the relative proportion of large biomass species increases in the predator community. This suggests that biological control may be affected by negative interactions (e.g. intraguild predation, behavioural interactions) between predators arising from the recruitment of large individuals in the community.Our study revealed that the shape of biomass distribution is a major aspect of functional diversity in predator communities providing insights into the mechanisms that link biodiversity and ecosystem services. While our study focuses on biomass, considering other traits involved in trophic interactions may increase our ability to predict the level of biological control in ecosystems. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agricultural landscapes, arthropods provide essential ecosystem services such as biological pest control and pollination. Intensified crop management practices and homogenization of landscapes have led to declines among such organisms. Semi‐natural habitats, associated with high numbers of these organisms, are increasingly lost from agricultural landscapes but diversification by increasing crop diversity has been proposed as a way to reverse observed arthropod declines and thus restore ecosystem services. However, whether or not an increase in the diversity of crop types within a landscape promotes diversity and abundances of pollinating and predaceous arthropods, and how semi‐natural habitats might modify this relationship, are not well understood.To test how crop diversity and the proportion of semi‐natural habitats within a landscape are related to the diversity and abundance of beneficial arthropod communities, we collected primary data from seven studies focusing on natural enemies (carabids and spiders) and pollinators (bees and hoverflies) from 154 crop fields in Southern Sweden between 2007 and 2017.Crop diversity within a 1‐km radius around each field was positively related to the Shannon diversity index of carabid and pollinator communities in landscapes rich in semi‐natural habitats. Abundances were mainly affected by the proportion of semi‐natural habitats in the landscape, with decreasing carabid and increasing pollinator numbers as the proportion of this habitat type increased. Spiders showed no response to either crop diversity or the proportion of semi‐natural habitats.Synthesis and applications. We show that the joint effort of preserving semi‐natural habitats and promoting crop diversity in agricultural landscapes is necessary to enhance communities of natural enemies and pollinators. Our results suggest that increasing the diversity of crop types can contribute to the conservation of service‐providing arthropod communities, particularly if the diversification of crops targets complex landscapes with a high proportion of semi‐natural habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing landscape heterogeneity, both in terms of composition and configuration, can promote natural enemies and biological control in agricultural landscapes. However, relatively poor information exists about the effects of landscape heterogeneity on lacewings, which are a major group of predators. Furthermore, temporal changes of landscape effects on natural enemy dynamics remain largely unexplored.Here, we investigated how landscape composition and configuration affect lacewings and their biological control potential on leafhoppers. Lacewings and leafhoppers were sampled from April to July in 10 vineyards located in southwestern France. The vineyards were selected along a gradient of a proportion of semi‐natural habitats in the landscape.The proportion of semi‐natural habitats positively affected the abundance of adults and eggs, as well as species richness, of lacewings, alone or in interaction with the sampling month. Landscape configuration was never found to enhance abundance or species richness of lacewings. Finally, the predator–prey ratio increased through time but did not respond to landscape composition or configuration.Our study highlights that the proportion of semi‐natural habitats increases both abundance and diversity of lacewings in vineyard landscapes but that this effect varies over time. This result indicates the need to assess the variability of landscape effects over time to maximize biological pest control services in agricultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological intensification of agriculture (EIA) aims to assure food security by harnessing ecosystem services while minimizing external inputs and environmental harms. One manifestation of EIA proposed worldwide is agroecological farming, which will affect future landscapes, biodiversity and make assurance of crop yields more reliant on management of natural pest control. Using a systematic review we examined available knowledge to forecast the consequences for natural pest control of a landscape-scale transition to agroecological farming. A large body of information showed that prevailing agroecological practices can enhance natural pest control at the field level. This was, however, highly context specific (organisms, crop types or regions) and often modulated by landscape complexity, albeit in an inconsistent way. Consequently, our generic understanding of the functional responses of natural pest control to agroecological management remains limited. Furthermore, the consequences of a landscape-scale expansion of agroecological farming for natural pest control was hardly documented, with results suggesting limited effects. Available modelling tools and approaches to forecast natural pest control were diverse and promising, but the integration of accurate descriptions of farming practices at the landscape scale remains a challenge. Few studies integrated socio-economic aspects and we present some approaches to guide and co-design the transition to future agroecological landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic farming is seen as a prototype of ecological intensification potentially able to conciliate crop productivity and biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes. However, how natural enemies, an important functional group supporting pest control services, respond to organic farming at different scales and in different landscape contexts remain unclear. Using a hierarchical design within a vineyard‐dominated region located in southwestern France, we examine the independent effects of organic farming and semi‐natural habitats at the local and landscape scales on natural enemies. We show that the proportion of organic farming is a stronger driver of species abundance than the proportion of semi‐natural habitats and is an important facet of landscape heterogeneity shaping natural enemy assemblages. Although our study highlights a strong taxonomic group‐dependency about the effect of organic farming, organic farming benefits to dominant species while rare species occur at the same frequency in the two farming systems. Independently of farming systems, enhancing field age, reducing crop productivity, soil tillage intensity, and pesticide use are key management options to increase natural enemy biodiversity. Our study indicates that policies promoting the expansion of organic farming will benefit more to ecological intensification strategies seeking to enhance ecosystem services than to biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win-win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win-win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Organic farming is a promising way to reduce pesticide use but increasing the area under organic farming at the landscape scale could increase pest infestations and reduce crop productivity. Examining the effects of organic farming at multiple spatial scales and in different landscape contexts on pest communities and crop productivity is a major step in the ecological intensification of agricultural systems. We quantified the infestation levels of two pathogens and five arthropod pests, the intensity of pesticide use and crop productivity in 42 vineyards. Using a multi‐scale hierarchical design, we unravelled the relative effects of organic farming at both field and landscape scales from the effects of semi‐natural habitats in the landscape. At the field scale, pest communities did not differ between organic and conventional farming systems. At the landscape scale, increasing the area under organic farming did not increase pest infestation levels. Three out of seven pest taxa were affected both by local farming systems and the proportion of semi‐natural habitats in the landscape. Our findings revealed that the proportion of semi‐natural habitats reduced pest infestation for two out of seven pest taxa. Organic vineyards had much lower treatment intensities, very similar levels of pest control and equal crop productivity levels. Synthesis and Applications. Our results clearly indicate that policies promoting the development of organic farming in conventional vineyard landscapes will not lead to greater pest and disease infestations but will reduce the pesticide treatment intensity and maintain crop productivity. Moreover, the interactions between semi‐natural habitats in landscape and local farming practices suggest that the deployment of organic farming should be adapted to landscape contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of effects of anthropogenic disturbance on biodiversity (BD) and ecosystem services (ES) and their relationships are key priorities of the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Agricultural landscapes and their associated BD provide multiple ES and it is crucial to understand how relationships between ES and BD components change along gradients of landscape complexity. In this study, we related eight ES potentials to the species richness of five invertebrate, vertebrate and plant taxonomic groups in cereal farming systems. The landscape complexity gradient ranged from areas dominated by annually tilled arable land to areas with high proportions of unfertilized, non-rotational pastures and uncultivated field borders. We show that after accounting for landscape complexity relationships between yield and bird richness or biological control became more positive, but relationships between bird richness and biological control became less positive. The relationship between bird and plant richness turned from positive to negative. Multidiversity (overall biodiversity), was positively related to landscape complexity, whereas multifunctionality (overall ES provision), was not significantly related to either one of these. Our results suggest that multidiversity can be promoted by increasing landscape complexity; however; we found no support for a simultaneous increase of several individual ES, BD components or multifunctionality. These results challenge the assumption that biodiversity-friendly landscape management will always simultaneously promote multiple ES in agricultural landscapes. Future studies need to verify this pattern by using multi-year data, larger sets of ES and BD components and a study design that is appropriate to address larger spatial scales and relationships in several regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic farming is a promising but still debated option to ensure sustainable agriculture. However, whether organic farming fosters synergies or mitigates tradeoffs between biodiversity, ecosystem services and crop production has rarely been quantified. Here, we investigate relationships between multitrophic diversity (14 taxa above and belowground), yield, natural pest control and soil quality (14 proxies of ecosystem services) in organic and conventional vineyards along a landscape gradient. Organic farming enhanced biodiversity and pest control, but decreased wine production. Compared to conventional systems, multitrophic diversity was 15 % higher, and pest control services were 9 % higher in organic systems, while wine production was 11 % lower. Regardless of management type, we found a strong tradeoff between wine production and pest control, but not between wine production and biodiversity. The landscape context was not a strong moderator of organic farming effects across taxa groups and ecosystem services, but affected specific taxa and ecosystem services, especially natural pest control. Our study reveals that wine production and biodiversity conservation do not necessarily exclude each other, which implies the existence of a safe operating space where biodiversity and wine production can be combined. We conclude that organic farming can contribute to improve the sustainability of viticulture, but needs to be complemented by management options at the local and landscape scales in order to fully balance biodiversity conservation with the simultaneous provision of multiple ecosystem services. • We study how organic farming affects biodiversity and ecosystem services in vineyards. • We compared biodiversity and multifunctionality in organic vs. conventional vineyards. • Organic farming promoted biodiversity and pest control but decreased wine production. • Organic farming did not influence linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem services. • We found a tradeoff wine production/pest control but not wine production/biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural intensification contributes to global food security and well-being by supplying the food demand of a growing human population. However, ongoing land-use change and intensification seriously affect the abundance, diversity and distribution of species, besides many other impacts, thereby threatening the functioning of ecosystems worldwide. Despite the accumulating evidence that the current agricultural model is unsustainable, we are far from understanding the consequences of functional diversity loss for functioning and ecosystem service supply and the potential long-term threats to food security and human well-being. In this review, we propose a conceptual framework to understand the relationships between functional diversity and human well-being that also considers agroecosystem health. To this end, we identify the most commonly assumed relationships linking functional diversity to regulating and provisioning agroecosystem services and their importance for human well-being, emphasising the most serious knowledge gaps in the individual pathways of the conceptual framework. A consortium formed by an international panel of experts from different disciplines including functional diversity, ecosystem services and human health compiled 275 articles. Members of the consortium proposed literature to exemplify each specific aspect of the conceptual framework in the text, in accordance with his/her field of expertise. The guideline for all experts was to focus mostly in current literature (38% of the references are from the last 5 years and 66% from the last decade), with special interest in reviews and synthesis articles (42% of the references), as well as meta-analyses and global studies (10% of the references). The factors that influence agroecosystem health are extremely complex, involving both services and disservices related to land-use management and environmental conditions. The global human population needs sustainable and resilient agroecosystems and a concerted effort is needed to fundamentally redesign agricultural practices to feed the growing human population without further jeopardising the quality of life for future generations. We highlight the potential effects of land-use change and ecological intensification on the functional diversity of plant and animal communities, and the resulting consequences for ecosystem services and ultimately human health. The resulting conceptual model is developed for researchers as well as policy makers highlighting the need for a holistic approach to understand diversity impacts on human well-being. Finally, we document a major knowledge gap due to the lack of any studies focusing on the full pathway from diversity to human well-being. [Display omitted] • We propose a conceptual framework to understand functional diversity-human health pathways. • The factors that influence agroecosystem health are extremely complex, involving both services and disservices. • Higher network complexity and multifunctionality enhance both regulating and provisioning services. • To promote agroecological practices will contribute to more sustainable future agriculture. • A systemic approach from a more holistic valuation of agroecosystem is necessary to ensure food security and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable land use in agricultural landscapes is essential to counteract the global decline of biodiversity, as well to ensure ecosystem services like natural pest control. Phytoseiid mites are key natural enemies of pest mites in vineyards but how local management and landscape context affect phytoseiid mites remains poorly known. In this study, we examined the effects of farming systems, inter-row management and landscape composition on phytoseiid mite communities in 156 vineyards across five European wine-growing regions. Our results showed that phytoseiid communities were mainly dominated by one or two phytoseiid species across Europe and that local management was a major factor affecting population densities. According to the wine-growing regions, phytoseiid mite densities benefited from integrated pest management or conventional farming compared to organic farming and from spontaneous vegetation cover compared to seeded cover crops. Moreover, mite densities benefited from increasing proportions of vineyards at the landscape scale. The farming systems effects were most likely related to the positive impact of the lower pesticide use in integrated and conventional vineyards. The positive effect of spontaneous vegetation cover could be related to a better supply of nutritive pollen as food resource compared to seeded cover crops, which depends on the plant species in the inter-row. Our findings indicated accordingly that a reduced pesticide use, and inter-row management are crucial factors for promoting pest control by predatory mites in European vineyards. Moreover, the proportion of viticultural area in the landscape is a considerable factor to retain stable phytoseiid mite populations. • Local management influenced predatory mite populations across European vineyards. • Farming systems with less pesticide use favoured phytoseiid mites in vineyards. • Spontaneous vegetation in the inter-row increased predatory mite populations. • Phytoseiid mites benefitted from a higher proportion of vineyards in the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecologists and farmers often have contrasting perceptions about the value of natural habitat in agricultural production landscapes, which so far has been little acknowledged in ecology and conservation. Ecologists and conservationists often appreciate the contribution of natural habitat to biodiversity and potential ecosystem services such as biological pest control, whereas many farmers see habitat remnants as a waste of cropland or source of pests. While natural habitat has been shown to increase pest control in many systems, we here identify five hypotheses for when and why natural habitat can fail to support biological pest control, and illustrate each with case studies from the literature: (1) pest populations have no effective natural enemies in the region, (2) natural habitat is a greater source of pests than natural enemies, (3) crops provide more resources for natural enemies than does natural habitat, (4) natural habitat is insufficient in amount, proximity, composition, or configuration to provide large enough enemy populations needed for pest control, and (5) agricultural practices counteract enemy establishment and biocontrol provided by natural habitat. In conclusion, we show that the relative importance of natural habitat for biocontrol can vary dramatically depending on type of crop, pest, predator, land management, and landscape structure. This variation needs to be considered when designing measures aimed at enhancing biocontrol services through restoring or maintaining natural habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence that most agricultural landscapes are failing to deliver on biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision suggests that future landscapes will need to be more explicitly designed. Although recent research has produced a number of ecological and social principles that should form the basis of agricultural landscape design process, implementation is still in its infancy. One difficulty is the context-dependency of ecological responses and the resulting limiting capacity to predict the benefits of landscape transformation for the targeted organisms or services. In addition, there is a poor understanding of the obstacles to and levers for the implementation of collective management at the landscape scale. In this paper, we argue that Landscape Monitoring Networks (LMN), i.e. long-term and standardized monitoring of ecological and managerial processes within a set of replicated regional landscapes, can contribute to tackling these issues. We first present the current challenges in designing agroecological landscapes before outlining the principles of LMN and how these research facilities could help deliver ecological and social understanding along a gradient from place-based to generic knowledge. We then discuss critical issues that need to be solved to ensure that LMN delivers relevant knowledge for landscape design. We illustrate this through the experience of an ongoing LMN that was created in France in 2014 to address biodiversity and pest control services in agricultural landscapes. • Designing agroecological landscapes remains challenging. • Generic and operational knowledge are both needed to support landscape design. • Landscape Monitoring Networks (LMN) can deliver both place-based and generic knowledge. • We illustrate this with the French LMN on biodiversity and pest control services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the multifunctionality of agroecosystems is crucial to design more sustainable farming systems. While it is known that organic farming benefits biodiversity and ecosystem services, how organic farming affects their multifunctionality, including agronomical, ecological as well as economic dimensions, remains poorly explored. In this study, we investigated how individual indicators regrouped into agroecosystem goods of vineyards respond to farming systems and landscape composition. We also explored how ecosystem services resulting from agroecosystem goods respond to farming systems and landscape composition. In addition, we evaluated trade-offs and synergies between agroecosystem goods as well as between ecosystem services for each farming systems. We quantified 14 indicators corresponding to five agroecosystem goods (biodiversity conservation, soil organic matter decomposition, pest control, wine production, margin) in 20 pairs of organic and conventional vineyards. Our study reveals that organic farming did not improve agroecosystem multifunctionality compared to conventional farming but led to lower trade-offs between agroecosystem goods. We found that organic systems increase supporting and regulating services but had lower provisioning service compared to conventional systems. Indeed, organic vineyards had multiple beneficial effects including higher pest control, lower production costs but produced less wine. Our results indicate a strong trade-off between pest control and wine production in both systems. In addition, conventional systems supported a negative trade-off between biodiversity conservation and wine production which was not the case of organic systems. Our study provides key information to further design farming systems that combine ecological, economical and agronomical performances. Further investigations are now needed to identify which combined management options maximize multiple performance of agroecosystems independently of certifications and across scales. [Display omitted] • Farming sytems were compared using fourteen indicators, five agroecosystem goods and three ecosystem services • We found similar levels of multifunctionality but organic systems showed lower trade-offs between agroecosystem goods • Organic farming favored regulating and supporting services but reduced provisioning service compared to conventional farming • Despite contrasted performance profiles, organic and conventional systems had similar economic margins [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loss in seed yield and therefore decrease in plant fitness due to simultaneous attacks by multiple herbivores is not necessarily additive, as demonstrated in evolutionary studies on wild plants. However, it is not clear how this transfers to crop plants that grow in very different conditions compared to wild plants. Nevertheless, loss in crop seed yield caused by any single pest is most often studied in isolation although crop plants are attacked by many pests that can cause substantial yield losses. This is especially important for crops able to compensate and even overcompensate for the damage. We investigated the interactive impacts on crop yield of four insect pests attacking different plant parts at different times during the cropping season. In 15 oilseed rape fields in Sweden, we estimated the damage caused by seed and stem weevils, pollen beetles, and pod midges. Pest pressure varied drastically among fields with very low correlation among pests, allowing us to explore interactive impacts on yield from attacks by multiple species. The plant damage caused by each pest species individually had, as expected, either no, or a negative impact on seed yield and the strongest negative effect was caused by pollen beetles. However, seed yield increased when plant damage caused by both seed and stem weevils was high, presumably due to the joint plant compensatory reaction to insect attack leading to overcompensation. Hence, attacks by several pests can change the impact on yield of individual pest species. Economic thresholds based on single species, on which pest management decisions currently rely, may therefore result in economically suboptimal choices being made and unnecessary excessive use of insecticides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing pesticide use in agricultural landscapes involves understanding the environmental drivers that affect pesticide application and its subsequent effect on pests. Landscape diversification has been found to benefit natural enemies of pests that may lead to lower pest pressure, but its effect on pests and pesticide use, in particular, remains unclear. We investigated how the proportion of organic farming and semi-natural habitats in the landscape affect pesticide use in conventional and organic vineyards based on 22 pairs of vineyards selected along landscape gradients. We quantified both insecticide and fungicide use by farmers as vineyards are heavily sprayed against insect pests and pathogens. Our study indicates that the share of organic farming in the total vineyard area and the proportion of semi-natural habitats in the landscape influence pesticide use. We found a tendency for insecticide use to increase with the share of vineyards under organic farming in the landscape, both in organic and conventional fields. Fungicide use followed the same pattern but only in conventional fields. Significant increases in pesticide use due to a higher share of organic farming were small, rarely exceeding 14% of the treatment frequency index. Notably, our results revealed contrasted effects of the proportion of semi-natural habitats on pesticide use between organic and conventional farming. Landscapes with a higher proportion of semi-natural habitats tended to increase fungicide use in conventional fields while insecticide use tended to decrease in organic fields. Our results demonstrate that designing landscapes that limit pesticide use should consider farming practices and semi-natural habitats within the landscape to favour beneficial effects on pest control while minimising potential adverse effects. • Pesticide use was monitored in 22 pairs of organic and conventional vineyards. • Insecticide use decreased in organic fields with landscape-level semi-natural habitats. • Fungicide use rose in conventional fields with the share of organic in vineyards. • Insecticide use rose in fields with more organic vineyards in the landscape. • The treatment frequency index varied at most by 14% with landscape context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semi-natural habitats (SNH) play key roles for arthropod natural enemy communities in agricultural landscapes. Positive relationship between landscape complexity and biological pest control is now well known and is assumed to mainly come from the fact that natural enemies use semi-natural habitats for overwintering. However, the respective role of each type of semi-natural habitats in the landscape in shaping natural enemy communities and pest control remains poorly studied. Moreover, the relative importance of environmental variables in structuring these communities remains largely unexplored. The main purpose of this study was to provide an insight into the types of SNH natural enemies use for overwintering as well as the effects of local and landscape characteristics in structuring their overwintering communities. Overwintering natural enemy communities were sampled in 7 types of SNH (i.e., forest interior (FI), South-facing forest edge (FES), North-facing forest edge (FEN), dry unmanaged grassland (UGD), wet unmanaged grassland (UGW), managed grass strip (CAP grass strip) either dominated by monocotyledonous plants (MGM) or by dicotyledonous plants (MGD)). Abundance, species richness as well as community composition of each group of enemies were then explained by local and landscape parameters to assess their relative importance. In our study, overwintering natural enemy communities differed markedly among types of SNH. Explanatory variables proved to have a decreasing influence in shaping natural enemy community compositions from the local (i.e. in the emergence trap perimeter, in 3 m- and 15 m-radius circular zones around it) to the immediat landscape (within 30 m- and 60 m-radius circular zones) and then the mid-distant one (within 120 m-, 250 m- and 500 m-radius circular zones). We particularly found that management intensity and vegetation height were very strong drivers of natural enemy diversity at the local scale. Managed CAP grass strips turned out as the main source habitat of beneficials in the spring while forests acted quite negatively on local abundances of most of the beneficials studied. On the opposite, medium arable land and grassland surface areas proved to be favourable for them as a whole in the immediat landscape, while in the mid-distant landscape, fallows favoured aphidophagous hoverflies and arable lands did so for spiders. Our results highlight the need for a more precise description of SNH in the landscape if we are to mechanistically understand the role of compositional landscape heterogeneity on zoophagous arthropod populations and to give relevant guidelines to design landscapes favouring natural biological pest control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New molecular markers are available to detect DNA of grape berry moth from bat faeces. • Bat activity increases when grape berry moths are present in vineyards. • Eleven bat species are identified as predators of grape berry moths. • Bats are delivering pest control services in French vineyards. Faced with current health and environmental challenges, viticulture is directly concerned with the need to reduce pesticide use. Natural pest control services provided by bats have been demonstrated in other crops and is regularly mentioned as a way to reduce pesticide use. However, the trophic link between bats and grape pests as well as the effect of pest presence on bat activities remain largely unknown. To investigate the functional role of bats in vineyard landscapes, we used two independent approaches. We monitored the activities of bats and of the European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) in 23 vineyards located in the Bordeaux region (France). In parallel, we developed DNA primers to examine bat faeces from two regions, Bordeaux and Burgundy, for the presence of the three main species of grapevine moths. Our results demonstrate that bats significantly increase their hunting activity when European grapevine moths are present in vineyards. In addition, our molecular analysis of the faeces provides robust evidence that at least 10 species of bats predate the three grapevine moth species. Our results therefore suggest that bats can be natural enemies of grape pests in vineyard landscapes. Further research is now needed to investigate the consequences of predation of pests by bats on crop production as well as the effect of some management options at both the local and landscape scale to increase the level of pest control services provided by bats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A high proportion of harvestmen consumed grape berry moths, springtails and grape phylloxera. • The presence of alternative prey did not explain harvestmen predation rates on grape berry moth. • Harvestmen predation rates on grape berry moths varied with landscape composition. • Conservation of semi-natural habitats in vineyards may increase biological pest control services delivered by harvestmen. Landscape complexity can benefit natural enemy communities and the biological pest control services they provide in agricultural landscapes. Harvestmen are generalist predators consuming a large range of prey in terrestrial ecosystems including agroecosystems. However, their ecology and their role in controlling pest populations in such ecosystems remain poorly studied. In this study, we examined predator–prey interactions between the European harvestmen (Phalangium opilio L.) and several potential prey species found in a vineyard agroecosystem. We sampled 20 populations of harvestmen in vineyards selected along a gradient of proportion of semi-natural habitats and used gut-content molecular analyses to quantify interaction strength between harvestmen and the grape berry moth, the main insect pest of grape, and two alternative prey species, springtails and the grape phylloxera. We found a high proportion of harvestmen positive to each type of prey with, on average, half of the individuals collected that had consumed grape berry moths. Increasing the proportion of semi-natural habitats in the landscape enhanced the proportion of harvestmen preying upon grape berry moths. Despite a significant number of harvestmen preying on springtails and grape phylloxera, the strength of the feeding interaction between harvestmen and these alternative prey species never significantly explained predation rates of the grape berry moth. Our results indicate that conserving semi-natural habitats increases biological pest control services delivered by harvestmen in vineyard landscapes and highlight the potentially important role of harvestmen in those agricultural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Weed seed predation increases with hedge length in the landscape. • Quality and amount of green infrastructures at local scale drive aphid predation. • Grassland plant diversity increases aphid predation in adjacent crop field. • Aphid predation is positively related to spider abundance. Green infrastructures are key elements for the delivery of ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. However, how to combine quality and quantity of green infrastructures at multiple spatial scales to optimize the delivery of ecosystem services remains largely unknown. In this study, we investigated how hedgerow amount in the landscape modulated the local effect of grassland quality (plant species richness) on the spillover of biological pest control services in adjacent sunflower fields. We quantified biological pest control and predator communities in 23 adjacent sunflower-grassland field couples selected along two uncorrelated gradients: a gradient of plant species richness in grassland and a gradient of hedge length in the landscape. Our study shows that increasing the amount or the quality of green infrastructures can enhance biological pest control in adjacent crops but that the effects depend on the pest considered. We found that weed seed predation depends only on hedge length in the large scale landscape, while aphid predation depends on plant species richness in the adjacent grassland and on the hedge length in the immediate landscape. Also, the abundance of spiders affects aphid predation suggesting a key role of this functional group for controlling aphids in sunflower fields. This study suggests that management options based on increasing local plant species richness should be prioritized in landscapes with low amount of hedgerows, and confirms the fact that increasing hedgerow networks should promote pest control services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agroecosystems, multiple ecosystem services such as soil fertility, pest regulation, crop production and biodiversity conservation need to be balanced to achieve both sustainable development goals and biodiversity targets. The main global change drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem services in viticultural landscapes are climate change, the invasion of alien (pest) species, land management changes, wine markets and policies. These drivers influence land use decisions at the local and regional level which affect multiple dimensions of biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services (ES). We will develop and test model frameworks which integrate different scenarios of land use across spatial scales for future management in viticultural regions from Spain, to France, Germany, Austria and Romania. First, we will organise workshops in each project region to develop stakeholder-driven scenarios which will be used as input for the agent-based models. Second, we will utilize existing knowledge from different European countries to build a predictive model for ES provision in viticulture. Third, the model will be validated using field measurements of above- and below-ground biodiversity plus the multiple ecosystem services that it provides. This will be done along gradients of landscape complexity and management options in five European case-study regions. The outcomes of the project will be (i) a conceptual model of the tradeoffs and synergies between multiple biodiversity-related ES in viticulture in relation to local and regional management and landscape structure which informs (ii) a spatially-explicit model integrating winegrowers as agents which influence land use decisions and consequently ES provision in response to different land-use scenarios and (iii) a software decision-support tool for stakeholders in viticulture that provides information on how to manage their crop to enhance biodiversity and multiple ES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]