Pear psyllid ( Cacopsylla pyri ) is the dominant pest of UK pear orchards, with an estimated cost of £5 million per annum. Insecticide withdrawal and increased pesticide resistance of C. pyri have led many growers to depend more on natural enemies for pest management, including earwigs. However, there is concern how phenological events may shift with future climate change, which may result in phenological mismatches. This stud...

Despite their diversity and importance as ecological indicators and ecosystem service providers, the macroecology of bats in South Asia is poorly understood, and until recently studies on the ecological niches of these species have been rare. This study analyses the ecogeographic predictors of habitat suitability in South Asian bats by conducting ensemble ecological niche modelling using four algorithms (random forests, artifi...

Pear psyllid ( Cacopsylla pyri ) is a persistent pest to the pear industry; with an estimated cost of £5 million per annum in the UK alone. This phloem feeding insect is resistant to a large proportion of approved pesticides, necessitating the use of alternative control strategies. Many pear growers practice integrated pest management (IPM) of pear psyllid, focusing on maximizing natural enemy populations, whilst minimizing th...

Whole ecosystem-based approaches are becoming increasingly common in pest management within agricultural systems. These strategies consider all trophic levels and abiotic processes within an ecosystem, including interactions between different factors. This review outlines a whole ecosystem approach to the integrated pest management of pear psyllid ( Cacopsylla pyri Linnaeus) within pear ( Pyrus communis L.) orchards, focusing...

Anthocoris nemoralis is the dominant predator of pear sucker ( Cacopsylla pyri ) in the UK. Anthocoris nemoralis migrates into orchards in spring or is introduced as a biocontrol agent, reaching peak population levels in July-August, contributing to effective control of summer pear sucker populations. However, due to temperature dependent development and metabolism there are concerns that C. pyri populations or feeding rates m...

Pollinator declines have prompted efforts to assess how land‐use change affects insect pollinators and pollination services in agricultural landscapes. Yet many tools to measure insect pollination services require substantial landscape‐scale data and technical expertise. In expert workshops, 3 straightforward methods (desk‐based method, field survey, and empirical manipulation with exclusion experiments) for rapid insect polli...

Tropical forests in India have declined at an alarming rate over the past century, with extensive literature focusing on the high contributions of agricultural expansions to deforestation, while the effects of climate change have largely been overlooked. Climate change effects, such as increasing temperatures, drought and flooding, have already occurred, and are projected to worsen. Climate velocity, a metric that accounts for...

Simultaneously enhancing ecosystem services provided by biodiversity below and above ground is recommended to reduce dependence on chemical pesticides and mineral fertilisers in agriculture. However, consequences for crop yield have been poorly evaluated. Above ground, increased landscape complexity is assumed to enhance biological pest control, whereas below ground, soil organic carbon is a proxy for several yield‐supporting...

Global climate change and its impacts are being increasingly studied and precipitation trends are one of the measures of quantifying climate change especially in the tropics. This study uses daily rainfall data to determine if there are changes in the long‐term trends in rainfall variability in the East Coast Mountains of Mauritius during the last few decades, and to investigate the factors influencing the trends in the inter‐...