M.M. Gardiner

TL;DR: This study indicates that natural enemies provide a regionally important ecosystem service by suppressing a key soybean pest, reducing the need for insecticide applications and suggests that management to maintain or enhance landscape diversity has the potential to stabilize or increase biocontrol services.

TL;DR: It is predicted that the success of insect conservation programs using flowering plants to increase AMES on farmland will depend on landscape context, with the greatest success in landscapes of moderate complexity.

TL;DR: The value of biocontrol services to the U.S. economy may be underestimated and development of cellulosic ethanol production processes that use a variety of feedstocks could foster increased diversity in agricultural landscapes and enhance arthropod-mediated ecosystem services.

TL;DR: It is proposed that grassland dominated landscapes with low structural diversity and low amounts of forested habitat may be resistant to exotic coccinellid build-up, particularly H. axyridis and therefore represent landscape-scale refuges for native cocccellid biodiversity.

TL;DR: The impact of intraguild predation on soybean aphid population dynamics is explored and it is indicated that while the exotic H. axyridis does act as an intrag guild predator and may contribute to local declines in A. aphidimyza and C. carnea, it is also currently important in overall biological control of A. glycines.