Vineyard landscape and natural pest control services in Bordeaux area

Abstract: Agricultural intensification is recognized as one of the main cause of biodiversity loss in agroecosystems. Increasing the reliance on ecosystem services has been recently suggested as a key step towards ecological intensification of cropping systems. Natural pest control by parasitoids and generalist predators is one of the major ecosystem services. Landscape context is known to affect pest and their natural enemies in most agroecosystems. However, this relationship remains poorly studied in vineyard landscapes. The aim of the present study was to examine the mechanisms between landscape characteristics, several major vine pests (grapevine moths and phytophagous mites), and their biological control by different natural enemies (birds, rodents, parasitoids). Pest population dynamics and natural pest control services (parasitism rates and predation) were monitored in 20 vineyards selected along a landscape complexity gradient in Bordeaux area. Our results revealed a positive relationship between landscape complexity and the grapevine moths (mainly Lobesia botrana) parasitism rates at a large scale (1 km radius). Predation by birds at the field edge increased with the proportion of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding environment (250 m radius). Predatory mites’ dynamics were mainly affected by within-field variables. Our study demonstrated that natural pest control services are determined by processes acting at multiple spatial scales and depending on species characteristics (e.g., body size, dispersal ability). These results provide guidelines for designing innovative pest management strategies at the landscape scale and will be completed by future research.