Landscape scale and local crop protection intensity affect the abundance of the codling moth and its predation and parasitism in apple orchards
Résumé
One important feature that may explain variation in pest abundance and pest biocontrol in crops is the land-use intensity in the landscapes. We report results from three studies in which we tried to address this question by assessing whether amount of semi-natural habitat and/or pesticide use at both local and landscape scales affected the abundance of codling moth, its parasitism and predation of sentinel eggs in commercial apple orchards of south-eastern France. Our results indicate that in this landscape there is indeed a significant effect of the pesticide use intensity at both the local and the landscape scales on these variables