Submission Date

7-19-2024

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Biology

Faculty Mentor

Cory Straub

Second Faculty Mentor

Denise Finney

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

Funded by the Van Sant research grant.

Project Description

Agricultural pests such as aphids are responsible for killing a significant number of farmers’ crops. Aphid predators provide biological pest control which is an important ecological service. The resilience of that ecological service is determined by the diverse responses to different environmental conditions and the diverse ranges in which predators can thrive. It has been shown that communities with a higher thermal resilience provide more stable pest control during temperature variations, such as those associated with a changing climate. We studied 5 agricultural fields around the SLU campus in Uppsala, Sweden using low-tech pitfall traps to collect predator and climate data. Each field day, we visited two fields and opened the traps by taking the lids off for two hours. During those two hours, we recorded the soil temperature and soil moisture and collected any predators at the end that were found in the traps. Our project assessed the climate niches of insect predators to contribute to a larger study that is determining how the strength of biological pest control changes under different climates. Our project is part of a multi-year study being conducted in Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Italy. The eventual outcome of the study will instruct Europe on how changes in climate events (droughts, heat waves, etc.) affect the resilience of biological pest control.

Download

Restricted

Available to Ursinus community only.

Share

COinS