A literature review on impacts of landscapes characteristics on densities of pests and on their regulation by natural enemies

Abstract: We performed a literature review on the impact of large-scale landscape compositionon the abundance of pests or conservation biological control (CBC) effectiveness, measured interms of parasitism or predation rates. We located 28 studies and 77 independent cases publishedbetween the years 1993-2008. Pests considered in these cases were mostly Lepidoptera,Hemiptera and Coleoptera. A large number of cases reported significant landscape effects but theonly significant tendency was that of increased CBC or lesser pest abundance with increasing noncultivated landscape area around sampling points.