Indirect effects of invasive insect management on forest insect abundance
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Invasive species, climate change, habitat destruction, and pesticides are severely threatening insect biodiversity on a global scale. In particular, invasive species are arriving in novel habitats at accelerating rates and are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity. In agricultural systems, invasive insects disrupt established integrated pest management programs, as growers primarily rely on chemical control. Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica Newman) is an invasive insect species that continues to spread throughout the Midwest. Soybean growers manage this pest with 3-4 additional insecticide applications per season, resulting in non-target effects on beneficial insects within agricultural systems. While many studies have quantified these non-target effects within agriculture, none have quantified the effects of these increased insecticides on insect populations in adjacent natural ecosystems. We investigate the effects of insecticide applications targeting Japanese beetle in soybean systems on insect abundance in adjacent forests. Treatments consisted of soybean fields treated with three weekly insecticide applications and untreated control fields. Samples were collected in field-adjacent forests at 4 sample sites along 40-meter straight-line transects. We compared the abundance of arboreal insects using yellow sticky traps deployed throughout forest canopies and ground-dwelling insects using pitfall traps. We observed significant reductions in overall insect abundance including key predator and parasitoid taxa in forests adjacent to insecticide-treated soybean.
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M.S.