Abstract
In recent years, global changes are the major causes of frequent, widespread outbreaks of pests in mosaic landscapes, which have received substantial attention worldwide. We collected data on global changes (landscape and climate) and economic damage caused by six main insect pests during 1951-2010 in China. Landscape changes had significant effects on all six insect pests. Pest damage increased significantly with increasing arable land area in agricultural landscapes. However, climate changes had no effect on damage caused by pests, except for the rice leaf roller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis Guenee) and armyworm (Mythimna separate (Walker)), which caused less damage to crops with increasing mean temperature. Our results indicate that there is slight evidence of possible offset effects of climate changes on the increasing damage from these two agricultural pests. Landscape changes have caused serious outbreaks of several species, which suggests the possibility of the use of landscape design for the control of pest populations through habitat rearrangement. Landscape manipulation may be used as a green method to achieve sustainable pest management with minimal use of insecticides and herbicides.
Highlights
Global changes, including landscape change and climate change, have become an important topic in ecology, especially with regard to biodiversity loss and pest outbreaks in agro-ecosystems during recent decades (Batary et al, 2011)
Landscape changes affected the damage from all six pests, which indicated that cropland expansion might be one of the main causes of the frequent pest outbreaks in recent times
Cropland expansion and removal of natural habitats were two key aspects in landscape changes. These landscape changes are caused by human activities, and have transformed many agricultural landscapes into expansive monocultures with little natural habitat (Schmidt-Entling and Dobeli, 2009)
Summary
Global changes, including landscape change and climate change, have become an important topic in ecology, especially with regard to biodiversity loss and pest outbreaks in agro-ecosystems during recent decades (Batary et al, 2011). Increased crop production in agro-ecosystems has modified agricultural landscapes greatly since the 1950s in several ways, including cropland expansion and the destruction of natural habitats (e.g., grasslands and woodlands) (Cobbold et al, 2012) These changes have led to high landscape simplification, which is important in agro-ecosystems. The current tendency of crop rotation and improved varieties generates rapid change and evolution in mosaic landscapes (Dangles et al, 2008; Eilers and Klein, 2009) These landscape changes may be the major drivers of increased pest damage and biodiversity loss in recent decades (Esper et al, 2007; Heller and Zavaleta, 2009). We conducted a large-scale spatial analysis, including landscape changes and climate changes
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