Chemical diversity rather than cultivar diversity predicts natural enemy control of herbivore pests.

Abstract

Cultivar mixtures have been studied for decades as a means for pest suppression. The literature, however, shows a large variability in outcomes, suggesting that we are unable to create mixtures that consistently suppress insect pests and attract natural enemies. A key gap in our understanding of how cultivar mixtures influence pest control is that few studies have examined the plant traits or mechanisms by which cultivar diversity affects pests and their interactions with natural enemies. The diversity of plant chemistry in a cultivar mixture is one trait dimension that is likely influential for insect ecology because chemical traits alter how predators and herbivores forage and interact. To understand how plant chemical diversity influences herbivores and their interactions with predators, we fully crossed predator presence or absence with monocultures, bicultures, and tricultures of three chemotypes of tomato that differed in odor diversity (terpenes) or surface chemistry (acyl sugars) in a caged field experiment. We found that the direct effects of plant chemotype diversity on herbivore performance were strongest in bicultures and depended on herbivore sex, and these effects typically acted through growth rather than survival. The effects of chemotype diversity on top-down pest suppression by natural enemies differed between classes of chemical diversity. Odor diversity (terpenes) interfered with the ability of predators to hunt effectively, whereas diversity in surface chemistry (acyl sugars) did not. Our results suggest that phytochemical diversity can contribute to pest suppression in agroecosystems, but that implementing it will require engineering cultivar mixtures using trait-based approaches that account for the biology of the pests and natural enemies in the system.