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506 results for “crop data”
Data for: Risk in the circular food economy: Glyphosate-based herbicide residues in manure fertilizers decrease crop yield
<p>Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are the most frequently used herbicides globally. They were launched as a safe solution for weed control, but recently, an increasing number of studies have shown the existence of GBH residues and highlighted the associated risks they pose throughout ecosystems. Conventional agricultural practices often include the use of GBHs, and the use of glyphosate-resistant genetically modified crops is largely based on the application of glyphosate, which increases the likelihood of its residues ending up in animal feed. These residues persist throughout the digestive process of production animals and accumulate in their excretion products. The poultry industry, in particular, is rapidly growing, and excreted products are used as plant fertilizers in line with circular food economy practices. We studied the potential effects of unintentional glyphosate contamination on an agronomically important forage grass, meadow fescue (<i>Festuca pratensis</i>) and a horticulturally important strawberry (<i>Fragaria x vescana</i>) using glyphosate residues containing poultry manure as a plant fertilizer in a common garden experiment. Glyphosate in the manure decreased plant growth in both species and vegetative reproduction in <i>F. x vescana</i>. Furthermore, our results indicate that glyphosate residues in organic fertilizers might have indirect effects on sexual reproduction in <i>F. pratensis</i> and herbivory in <i>F. x vescana</i> because they positively correlate with plant size. Our results highlight that glyphosate can be unintentionally spread via organic fertilizer, counteracting its ability to promote plant growth.</p>
Data from: Evidence for a thoracic crop in the workers of some Neotropical Pheidole species (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)
<p>The ability of ant colonies to transport, store, and distribute food resources through trophallaxis is a key advantage of social life. Nonetheless, how the structure of the digestive system has adapted across the ant phylogeny to facilitate these abilities is still not well understood. The crop and proventriculus, structures in the ant foregut (stomodeum), have received most attention for their roles in trophallaxis. However, potential roles of the esophagus have not been as well studied. Here, we report for the first time the presence of an auxiliary thoracic crop in <i>Pheidole aberrans </i>and <i>Pheidole deima</i> using X-ray micro-computed tomography and 3D segmentation. Additionally, we describe morphological modifications involving the endo and exoskeleton that are associated with the presence of the thoracic crop. Our results indicate that the presence of a thoracic crop in major workers suggests their potential role as repletes or live food reservoirs, expanding the possibilities of tasks assumed by these individuals in the colony. Our contribution emphasizes the utility of combining data from external and internal morphology to better understand functional and behavioral mechanisms.</p>
Data from: Prevalence and abundance of bees visiting major conventionally-managed agricultural crops in Brazil
This study brings together data from a series of local pollinator surveys undertaken in major conventionally-managed agricultural crops in Brazil to determine the presence and abundance of bees visiting flowers within crops compared with adjacent off-crop habitats. Surveys were undertaken within crops and in adjacent off-crop areas using broadly the same methodology in flowering soybean, drybean, maize, citrus, coffee, rice, and cotton and in sugarcane immediately harvest. The bee species present were assessed twice per day at three times during crop flowering (post-harvest for sugar-cane). Pan traps were used to collect species present within the crop and off-crop twice per day. Drybeans, citrus, and coffee flowers displayed a consistent medium to high abundance of honey bees based on effort-adjusted transect and spot counts. In contrast, fields with flowering soybeans and cotton showed in-crop lower abundance and rice, corn, and harvested sugar cane showed consistently low numbers or no honey bees. In almost all cases honey bees were the most prevalent and abundant flower visitors within the studied crops. Where non-Apis bees were observed they often belong to the Meliponini (primarily Trigona) or the genera Bombus or Xylocopa. The off-crop assessments of species presence using pan traps showed a far wider diversity of species with greater proportional representation of solitary bee species. Overall, whilst honey bees accounted for the majority of observed bees visiting flowers in the agricultural fields, the off-crop habitat contained a greater abundance and diversity of non-Apis bee populations.
Data from: Crop pollination services: complementary resource use by social vs solitary bees facing crops with contrasting flower supply
<p>1. Many farmers are facing high economic risks if pollinator declines continue or temporal and spatial variation in wild bee communities cause reduced pollination services. Co-flowering crops might compete for pollinators, while they also might facilitate the delivery of pollination services. This rarely studied topic is of particular interest with respect to the foraging decisions of bees from different functional groups and when more sparsely and mass-flowering crops are in bloom at the same time.</p> <p>2. The abundance of honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees in strawberry fields was quantified with transect walks along a gradient of oilseed rape (OSR) availability (product of OSR land cover and temporally changing OSR flower cover). We established a pollination experiment with pollination treatments (open-, wind- and self-pollination) to study the effects of insect pollination on strawberry fruit weight and quality.</p> <p>3. Changes in OSR availability exhibited contrasting effects on social versus solitary bees in strawberry fields. Bumble bees and honey bees were less abundant in strawberry fields when OSR availability was high, whereas solitary bees were facilitated. With more strawberry flowers we found more bees in general.</p> <p>4. When flowers were open-pollinated they resulted in heavier fruits with better commercial grades compared to wind-and self-pollinated flowers. A higher bee abundance enhanced the strawberry fruit weight and quality but depended on flower order and variety.</p> <p>5.<i> Synthesis and applications</i>. Sparsely flowering crops may compete with mass-flowering crops for social bee pollinators while solitary pollinators in the field might be even facilitated. To ensure best fruit weight and quality it can be beneficial to support bee abundance in the field. While some social and solitary bee species can be managed for pollination services, wild bees, in particular solitary species, should be conserved and promoted for stable crop pollination services in dynamic agricultural landscapes.</p>
Data from: Machine learning improves predictions of agricultural nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from intensively managed cropping systems
<p><span>The potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N</span><sub><span>2</span></sub><span>O) is accumulating in the atmosphere at unprecedented rates largely due to agricultural intensification, and cultivated soils contribute ~60% of the agricultural flux. Empirical models of N</span><sub><span>2</span></sub><span>O fluxes for intensively managed cropping systems are confounded by highly variable fluxes and limited </span><span><span>geographic coverage;</span></span><span> process-based biogeochemical models are rarely able to predict daily to monthly emissions with > 20% accuracy even with site-specific calibration. Here we show the promise for machine learning (ML) to significantly improve field-level flux predictions, especially when coupled with a cropping systems model to simulate unmeasured </span><span><span>soil</span></span><span> parameters. We used sub-daily N</span><sub><span>2</span></sub><span>O flux data from six years of automated flux chambers installed in a continuous corn rotation at a site in the upper U.S. Midwest (~3000 sub-daily flux observations), supplemented with weekly to biweekly manual chamber measurements (~1100 daily fluxes), to train an ML model that explained 65-89% of daily flux variance with very few input variables –soil moisture, days after fertilization, soil texture, air temperature, soil carbon, precipitation, and N fertilizer rate. When applied to a long-term test site not used to train the model, the model explained 38% of the variation observed in weekly to biweekly manual chamber measurements from corn, and 51% upon coupling the ML model with a cropping systems model that predicted daily soil N availability. </span><span><span>This represents a 2-3 times improvement over conventional process-based models and with substantially fewer input requirements.</span></span><span> This coupled approach </span><span><span>offers promise</span></span><span> for better predictions of agricultural N</span><sub><span>2</span></sub><span>O emissions and thus more precise global models and more effective </span><span><span>agricultural mitigation interventions.</span></span></p>
Data from: Abiotic and biotic context dependency of perennial crop yield
<p>Perennial crops in agricultural systems can increase sustainability and the magnitude of ecosystem services, but yield may depend upon biotic context, including soil mutualists, pathogens and cropping diversity. These biotic factors themselves may interact with abiotic factors such as drought. We tested whether perennial crop yield depended on soil microbes, water availability and crop diversity by testing monocultures and mixtures of three perennial crop species: a novel perennial grain (intermediate wheatgrass—<i>Thinopyrum intermedium</i>-- that produces the perennial grain Kernza®), a potential perennial oilseed crop (<i>Silphium intregrifolium</i>), and alfalfa (<i>Medicago sativa</i>). Perennial crop performance depended upon both water regime and the presence of living soil, most likely the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in the whole soil inoculum from a long term perennial monoculture and from an undisturbed native remnant prairie. Specifically, both <i>Silphium</i> and alfalfa strongly benefit from AM fungi. The presence of native prairie AM fungi had a greater benefit to <i>Silphium </i>in dry pots and alfalfa in wet pots than AM fungi present in the perennial monoculture soil. Kernza did not benefit from AM fungi. Crop mixtures that included Kernza overyielded, but overyielding depended upon inoculation. Specifically, mixtures with Kernza overyielded most strongly in sterile soil as Kernza compensated for poor growth of <i>Silphium</i> and alfalfa. This study identifies importance of soil biota and the context dependence of benefits of native microbes and the overyielding of mixtures in perennial crops.</p>
Data from: Landscape diversity moderates the effects of bee visitation frequency to flowers on crop production.
1.Reductions in natural habitat are implicated in declining honey bee Apis mellifera L. and wild bee populations, thereby threatening crop production. This concern has stimulated interest in identifying landscape-level impacts on bee-mediated pollination services, but previous studies have only inferred connections between landscape, bees and yield through generalized linear regressions. 2. We examined landscape impacts on bee-mediated crop yield using both a traditional linear regression approach and conditional process modelling, which combined landscape features, bee visits to crop flowers, interactions between landscape and bee visits to flowers into a single model predicting crop yield. We used the pumpkin Cucurbita pepo L. system in New York State and recorded bees visiting pumpkin flowers in 2011 and 2012. Landscape diversity and percentage of semi-natural grassland around each pumpkin field were calculated. 3. Results from the traditional approach indicated that landscape diversity, percentage of grassland in the landscape, bumble bee Bombus impatiens Cresson, and honey bee visitation frequency each positively predicted yield. A common conclusion from these results is that pumpkins grown in highly diverse or high grassland coverage landscapes would have greater yields via bumble bee and honey bee visits to flowers. However, this inference does not preclude the possibility that landscape features may be associated with crop yield, independent of bee visits to flowers. 4. Results from conditional process modelling indicated that only pumpkins grown in highly diverse landscapes were predicted to have greater yields as a consequence of more bumble bee visits to pumpkin flowers. None of the landscape features predicted greater fruit yields as a consequence of more honey bee visits to pumpkin flowers. This novel analysis indicated that traditional approaches may be misinterpreting the relationships among these variables. 5. Synthesis and applications. Bumble bees benefited from a diverse landscape and their visits to flowers positively impacted pumpkin production. Conservation of a diverse landscape should be promoted to support improved pumpkin production. Growers can use this information to decide where to plant pumpkins to improve the potential for high yields, to identify scenarios where landscape diversity could be increased, and where supplementation with bees might be beneficial.
Data from: Complementary crops and landscape features sustain wild bee communities
Wild bees, which are important for commercial pollination, depend on floral and nesting resources both at farms and in the surrounding landscape. Mass-flowering crops are only in bloom for a few weeks and unable to support bee populations that persist throughout the year. Farm fields and orchards that flower in succession potentially can extend the availability of floral resources for pollinators. However, it is unclear whether the same bee species or genera will forage from one crop to the next, which bees specialize on particular crops, and to what degree inter-crop visitation patterns will be mediated by landscape context. We therefore studied local- and landscape-level drivers of bee diversity and species turnover in apple orchards, blueberry fields and raspberry fields that bloom sequentially in southern Quebec, Canada. Despite the presence of high bee species turnover, orchards and small fruit fields complemented each other phenologically by supporting two bee genera essential to their pollination: mining bees (Andrena spp.) and bumble bees (Bombus spp.). A number of bee species specialized on apple, blueberry or raspberry blossoms, suggesting that all three crops could be used to promote regional bee diversity. Bee diversity (rarefied richness, wild bee abundance) was highest across crops in landscapes containing hedgerows, meadows and suburban areas that provide ancillary nesting and floral resources throughout the spring and summer. Promoting phenological complementarity in floral resources at the farmstead and landscape scales is essential to sustaining diverse wild bee populations.
Data from: Genomics of Compositae crops: reference transcriptome assemblies, and evidence of hybridization with wild relatives
Although the Compositae harbours only two major food crops, sunflower and lettuce, many other species in this family are utilized by humans and have experienced various levels of domestication. Here we have used next generation sequencing technology to develop 15 reference transcriptome assemblies for Compositae crops or their wild relatives. These data allow us to gain insight into the evolutionary and genomic consequences of plant domestication. Specifically, we performed Illumina sequencing of Cichorium endivia, Cichorium intybus, Echinacea angustifolia, Iva annua, Helianthus tuberosus, Dahlia hybrida, Leontodon taraxacoides and Glebionis segetum, as well 454 sequencing of Guizotia scabra, Stevia rebaudiana, Parthenium argentatum and Smallanthus sonchifolius. Illumina reads were assembled using Trinity, and 454 reads were assembled using MIRA and CAP3. We evaluated the coverage of the transcriptomes using BLASTX analysis of a set of ultra-conserved orthologs (UCOs) and recovered most of these genes (88-98%). We found a correlation between contig length and read length for the 454 assemblies, and greater contig lengths for the 454 compared to the Illumina assemblies. This suggests that longer reads can aid in the assembly of more complete transcripts. Finally, we compared the divergence of orthologs at synonymous sites (Ks) between Compositae crops and their wild relatives and found greater divergence when the progenitors were self-incompatible. We also found greater divergence between pairs of taxa that had some evidence of post-zygotic isolation. For several more distantly related congeners, such as chicory and endive, we identified a signature of introgression in the distribution of Ks values.
Data from: Natural vegetation benefits synergistic control of the three main insect and pathogen pests of fruit crop in southern Africa
1. Most studies of the potential for natural habitat to improve agricultural productivity have been conducted in transformed, temperate regions, but little is known of the importance of agroecosystem services in biodiverse developing countries. 2. Natural vegetation may promote the density and/or diversity of natural enemies of crop pests, but the strength of the effect varies, and few studies directly measure concurrent impacts on pest density. Considering multiple pest species within the same agroecosystem may help explain why some pests are more affected than others by landscape complexity. Here, we investigated multiple pest species (three species of Tephritidae fruit fly, leaf galling flies and pathogenic fungi Fusarium spp.) and their enemies in cultivated mango Mangifera indica, in north-eastern South Africa. 3. The density of generalist Tephritidae fruit flies increased with distance from natural vegetation during harvesting months, and predation rate of pupae sharply decreased from ~50% at the edge with natural vegetation to 0% at 250 m into the crop. Parasitism rates of the cryptic, gall-forming fly increased with proximity to natural vegetation, but pest density was unrelated to distance from natural vegetation. Incidence of the fungal pathogen disease increased with distance from natural vegetation, possibly due to decreased predation of commensal mites. 4. Although the relationship with distance to natural vegetation was significant for all species considered, the strength of this relationship varied across pest species and type of natural enemy studied, suggesting the benefits of natural vegetation depend on each natural enemy species' ability to disperse into the agricultural environment. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that natural vegetation is a net source of natural enemies in a region of South Africa that still contains much of its natural biodiversity. However, the decline in natural enemies, and increase in pests, with distance from natural habitat indicates that this biocontrol is limited by natural enemy dispersal. In landscapes like these that are still dominated by natural habitat, conservation biocontrol can still be improved by management aimed at providing corridors of key plants and habitat elements into the crops, to facilitate natural enemy dispersal.
Data from: The accumulation of deleterious mutations as a consequence of domestication and improvement in sunflowers and other Compositae crops
For populations to maintain optimal fitness, harmful mutations must be efficiently purged from the genome. Yet, under circumstances that diminish the effectiveness of natural selection, such as the process of plant and animal domestication, deleterious mutations are predicted to accumulate. Here, we compared the load of deleterious mutations in 21 accessions from natural populations and 19 domesticated accessions of the common sunflower using whole-transcriptome single nucleotide polymorphism data. Although we find that genetic diversity has been greatly reduced during domestication, the remaining mutations were disproportionally biased toward nonsynonymous substitutions. Bioinformatically predicted deleterious mutations affecting protein function were especially strongly over-represented. We also identify similar patterns in two other domesticated species of the sunflower family (globe artichoke and cardoon), indicating that this phenomenon is not due to idiosyncrasies of sunflower domestication or the sunflower genome. Finally, we provide unequivocal evidence that deleterious mutations accumulate in low recombining regions of the genome, due to the reduced efficacy of purifying selection. These results represent a conundrum for crop improvement efforts. Although the elimination of harmful mutations should be a long-term goal of plant and animal breeding programs, it will be difficult to weed them out because of limited recombination.
Data from: Mass-flowering crops dilute pollinator abundance in agricultural landscapes across Europe
Mass-flowering crops (MFCs) are increasingly cultivated and might influence pollinator communities in MFC fields and nearby semi-natural habitats (SNHs). Across six European regions and 2 years, we assessed how landscape-scale cover of MFCs affected pollinator densities in 408 MFC fields and adjacent SNHs. In MFC fields, densities of bumblebees, solitary bees, managed honeybees and hoverflies were negatively related to the cover of MFCs in the landscape. In SNHs, densities of bumblebees declined with increasing cover of MFCs but densities of honeybees increased. The densities of all pollinators were generally unrelated to the cover of SNHs in the landscape. Although MFC fields apparently attracted pollinators from SNHs, in landscapes with large areas of MFCs they became diluted. The resulting lower densities might negatively affect yields of pollinator-dependent crops and the reproductive success of wild plants. An expansion of MFCs needs to be accompanied by pollinator-supporting practices in agricultural landscapes.
Data from: Landscape simplification reduces classical biological control and crop yield
Agricultural intensification resulting in the simplification of agricultural landscapes is known to negatively impact the delivery of key ecosystem services such as the biological control of crop pests. Both conservation and classical biological control may be influenced by the landscape context in which they are deployed; yet studies examining the role of landscape structure in the establishment and success of introduced natural enemies and their interactions with native communities are lacking. In this study, we investigated the relationship between landscape simplification, classical and conservation biological control services and importantly, the outcome of these interactions for crop yield. We showed that agricultural simplification at the landscape scale is associated with an overall reduction in parasitism rates of crop pests. Additionally, only introduced parasitoids were identified, and no native parasitoids were found in crop habitat irrespective of agricultural landscape simplification. Pest densities in the crop were lower in landscapes with greater proportions of semi natural habitats. Furthermore, farms with less semi-natural cover in the landscape and consequently, higher pest numbers, had lower yields than farms in less agriculturally dominated landscapes. Our study demonstrates the importance of landscape scale agricultural simplification in mediating the success of biological control programs and highlights the potential risks to native natural enemies in classical biological control programs against native insects. Our results represent an important contribution to an understanding of the landscape-mediated impacts on crop yield which will be essential to implementing effective policies that simultaneously conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Data from: Landscape diversity and crop vigor influence biological control of the western grape leafhopper (E. elegantula Osborn) in vineyards
This study evaluated how the proportional area of natural habitat surrounding a vineyard (i.e. landscape diversity) worked in conjunction with crop vigor, cultivar and rootstock selection to influence biological control of the western grape leafhopper (Erythroneura elegantula Osborn). The key natural enemies of E. elegantula are Anagrus erythroneurae S. Trjapitzin & Chiappini and A. daanei Triapitsyn, both of which are likely impacted by changes in landscape diversity due to their reliance on non-crop habitat to successfully overwinter. Additionally, E. elegantula is sensitive to changes in host plant quality which may influence densities on specific cultivars, rootstocks and/or vines with increased vigor. From 2010–2013, data were collected on natural enemy and leafhopper densities, pest parasitism rates and vine vigor from multiple vineyards that represented a continuum of landscape diversity. Early in the season, vineyards in more diverse landscapes had higher Anagrus spp. densities and lower E. elegantula densities, which led to increased parasitism of E. elegantula. Although late season densities of E. elegantula tended to be lower in vineyards with higher early season parasitism rates and lower total petiole nitrogen content, they were also affected by rootstock and cultivar. While diverse landscapes can support higher natural enemy populations, which can lead to increased biological control, leafhopper densities also appear to be mediated by cultivar, rootstock and vine vigor.
Data from: Attracting mutualists and antagonists: plant trait variation explains the distribution of specialist floral herbivores and pollinators on crops and wild gourds
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Floral traits play important roles in pollinator attraction and defense against floral herbivory. However, plants may experience trade-offs between conspicuousness to pollinators and herbivore attraction. Comparative studies provide an excellent framework to examine the role of multiple traits shaping mutualist and antagonist interactions. METHODS: To assess whether putative defensive and attractive traits predict species interactions, we grew 20 different Cucurbitaceae species and varieties in the field to measure interactions with pollinators and herbivores and in the greenhouse to assess trait variation. Cucurbits are characterized by the production of cucurbitacins, bitter nonvolatile terpenoids that are effective against generalist herbivores but can attract specialist beetles. We determined whether plant traits such as cucurbitacins predict herbivore resistance and pollinator attraction using an information-theoretic approach. KEY RESULTS: Mutualists and floral antagonists were attracted to the same cucurbit varieties once they flowered. However, rather than cucurbitacin concentration, we found that the size of the flower and volatile emissions of floral sesquiterpenoids explained both pollinator and floral herbivore visitation preference across cucurbit taxa. This pattern held across cucurbit taxa and within the Cucurbita genus. CONCLUSIONS: Surprisingly, floral sesquiterpenoid volatiles, which are associated with direct defense, indirect defense, and attraction, rather than defense traits such as cucurbitacins, appeared to drive interactions with both pollinators and floral herbivores across cucurbit taxa. Identifying the relevant plant traits for attraction and deterrence is important in this economically valuable crop, particularly if pollinators and floral herbivores use the same plant traits as cues.
Data from: Tailored flower strips promote natural enemy biodiversity and pest control in potato crops
1. Sown flower strips are increasingly implemented within agri-environment schemes (AES) to increase functional biodiversity and ecosystem services such as pollination or natural pest control, but their effectiveness in achieving these goals remains poorly studied. 2. We tested the performance of experimentally sown annual flower strips specifically designed to promote natural enemies of aphids and their pest control services (tailored flower strips) in adjacent potato crops (n=8) compared to control fields (n=10). Flower strips consisted of 11 plant species providing abundant floral and extra-floral resources. 3. The abundance of key natural enemies of aphids (hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds) and hoverfly species richness was greatly enhanced in tailored flower strips compared to potato control strips. This resulted in an average increase in the number of eggs deposited by hoverflies and lacewings by 127 % and 48 %, respectively, and a reduction in the number of aphids by 75 % in adjacent potato crops. 4. Synthesis and applications. We conclude that tailored flower strips can be an effective agri-environmental measure to enhance natural enemies and aphid control in nearby crops. Indeed, tailored flower strips may help to reduce insecticide input in potato production as they significantly decrease the probability that action thresholds are reached. Promoting natural enemy abundance and diversity, as observed for hoverflies, may increase the stability of pest control and provide additional benefits to agro-ecosystems in terms of natural enemy conservation. We thus recommend establishing tailored flower strips as a promising management option to reconcile the objectives of ecological intensification and biodiversity conservation.
Data from: Netted crop covers reduce honey bee foraging activity and colony strength in a mass flowering crop
The widespread use of protective covers in horticulture represents a novel landscape-level change, presenting challenges for crop pollination. Honey bees (Apis mellifera L) are pollinators of many crops, but their behaviour can be affected by conditions under covers. To determine how netting crop covers can affect honey bee foraging dynamics, colony health, and pollination services, we assessed the performance of 52 nucleus honey bee colonies in five covered and six uncovered kiwifruit orchards. Colony strength was estimated pre- and post- introduction, and the foraging of individual bees (including pollen-, nectar-, and naïve foragers) was monitored in a subset of the hives fitted with RFID readers. Simultaneously, we evaluated pollination effectiveness by measuring flower visitation rates and the number of seeds produced after single honey bee visits. Honey bee colonies under cover exhibited both an acute loss of foragers and changes in the behaviour of successful foragers. Under cover, bees were four times less likely to return after their first trip outside the hive. Consequently, the number of adult bees in hives declined at a faster rate in these orchards, with colonies losing on average 1,057 ± 274 of their bees in under two weeks. Bees that did forage under cover completed fewer trips provisioning their colony, failing to re-enter after a few short-duration trips. These effects are likely to have implications for colony health and productivity. We also found that bee density (bees/thousand flowers) and visitation rates to flowers were lower under cover, however we did not detect a resultant change in pollination. Our findings highlight the need for environment-specific management techniques for pollinators. Improving honey bee orientation under covers and increasing our understanding of the effects of covers on bee nutrition and brood rearing should be primary objectives for maintaining colonies and potentially improving pollination in these systems.
Data from: Biocontrol in insecticide sprayed crops does not benefit from semi-natural habitats and recovers slowly after spraying
1. To enhance biological pest control in crop fields, it is recommended to increase semi-natural area on farm and decrease insecticide spraying. While the benefits of semi-natural area for biocontrol in unsprayed fields are often demonstrated, it remains largely unknown if there are any benefits in real world, commonly sprayed crops. 2. Here, we explored the combined effects of semi-natural field margins and insecticide spraying on pest (cotton bollworm) egg predation in 53 Australian cotton fields and semi-natural field margins across two years. We used predation experiments close to field edges to exclude functional groups of predators depending on their spatio-temporal activity (diurnal vs. nocturnal and ground vs. canopy dwelling) and digital cameras to record natural enemy taxa responsible for predation. 3. Ground predation was substantially higher than canopy predation and its magnitude in unsprayed crops with semi-natural margins was similar to that within semi-natural areas. In contrast, semi-natural field margins did not benefit biocontrol in sprayed crop fields and did not influence recovery rate of biocontrol after spraying. 4. Within ground-dwelling predators, one dominant taxon contributed the most to biocontrol at a particular time and place. However, the dominant predator-prey interactions changed between day and night and fields with and without margins, thus indicating increased importance of additional predator taxa with increasing spatio-temporal scales. 5. Synthesis and applications: Overall, our results show that semi-natural margins benefit pest control only in unsprayed fields. Spraying at different time (e.g. during night) would not reduce the negative effects of insecticides because it would affect complementary group of nocturnal natural enemies that exert equally high biocontrol as diurnal ground-dwelling predators. We highlight the need for management recommendations to simultaneously consider pros and cons of within field spraying and surrounding semi-natural habitats to maximize their benefits in high input conventional production systems.23-May-2019
Data S1 from "Global scale drivers of crop visitor diversity and the historical development of agriculture."
<p>Understanding diversity in flower visitor assemblages helps us improve pollination of crops and support better biodiversity conservation outcomes. Much recent research has focused on drivers of crop-visitor diversity operating over spatial scales from fields to landscapes, such as pesticide and habitat management, while drivers operating over larger scales of continents and biogeographic realms are virtually unknown. Flower and visitor traits influence attraction of pollinators to flowers, and evolve in the context of associations that can be ancient or recent. Plants that have been adopted into agriculture have been moved widely around the world and thereby exposed to new flower visitors. Remarkably little is known of the consequence of these historical patterns for present day crop-visiting bee diversity. We analyze data from 317 studies of 27 crops worldwide and find that crops are visited by fewer bee genera outside their region of origin and outside their family's region of origin. Thus, recent human history and the deeper evolutionary history of crops and bees appear to be important determinants of flower-visitor diversity at large scales that constrain the levels of visitor diversity that can be influenced by field- and landscape-scale interventions.</p>
Data from: The genetic architecture of ecological adaptation: intraspecific variation in host plant use by the lepidopteran crop pest Chloridea virescens
Intraspecific variation in ecologically important traits is a cornerstone of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The evolution and maintenance of this variation depends on genetic architecture, which in turn determines responses to natural selection. Some models suggest that traits with complex architectures are less likely to respond to selection than those with simple architectures, yet rapid divergence has been observed in such traits. The simultaneous evolutionary lability and genetic complexity of host plant use in the Lepidopteran subfamily Heliothinae suggest that architecture may not constrain ecological adaptation in this group. Here we investigate the response of Chloridea virescens, a generalist that feeds on diverse plant species, to selection for performance on a novel host, Physalis angulata (Solanaceae). P. angulata is the preferred host of Chloridea subflexa, a narrow specialist on the genus Physalis. In previous experiments, we found that the performance of C. subflexa on P. angulata depends on many loci of small effect distributed throughout the genome, but whether the same architecture would be involved in the generalist's adoption of P. angulata was unknown. Here we report a rapid response to selection in C. virescens for performance on P. angulata, and establish that the genetic architecture of intraspecific variation is quite similar to that of the interspecific differences in terms of the number, distribution, and effect sizes of the QTL involved. We discuss the impact of genetic architecture on the ability of Heliothine moths to respond to varying ecological selection pressures.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.