FunBioDiv

Functional analysis of biological pest control by plant diversification across scales

 

FunbioDiv assesses the impact of combining plant diversification strategies at different spatial and temporal scales on biodiversity and the control of crop pests.

Pesticide use is one of the main human pressures on biodiversity. Agroecological crop protection is an alternative that combines various management options related to plant diversification across scales to control pests, pathogens or weeds. However, no single management option can control all types of bioaggressors because of their specific modes of action, underlining the need to combine them. As part of the FunBioDiv project, we propose to build on a recent collective expertise (Vialatte et al. 2023) and a large European dataset to assess the impact of combining plant diversification strategies on biodiversity and pest control services. We will summarise the ecological mechanisms at play for the different strategies, using a functional trait approach. We will then build hypotheses about the functional impacts of combining several management options and test these hypotheses on the European dataset. We will quantify how communities of natural enemies, pathogens, weeds and insects respond to these management options. This project will thus identify combined management options that support biodiversity and biological control.