Birds suppress pests in corn but release them in soybean crops within a mixed prairie/agriculture system.

ABSTRACT: Birds provide ecosystem services (pest control) in many agroecosystems and have neutral or negative ecological effects (disservices) in others. Large-scale, conventional row crop agriculture is extremely widespread globally, yet few studies of bird effects take place in these agroecosystems. We studied indirect effects of insectivorous birds on corn and soybean crops in fields adjacent to a prairie in Illinois (USA). We hypothesized that prairie birds would forage for arthropods in adjacent crop fields and that the magnitude of services or disservices would decrease with distance from the prairie. We used bird-excluding cages over crops to examine the net effect of birds on corn and soybean grain yield. We also conducted DNA metabarcoding to identify arthropod prey in fecal samples from ca

SUBMITTER: Garfinkel MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7243448 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature