Native arthropods can be important pests within agricultural systems, and conservation of their natural enemies requires special considerations. Although native pests have the potential to be attacked by an assemblage of co-evolved natural enemies, the structure of current agricultural landscapes generally limits the diversity and abundance of their realized parasitoid community. The lepidopterous herbivores that attack corn, soybean, wheat, and alfalfa in the north central United States are primarily native, polyphagous feeders, many of which probably used trees and shrubs as hosts in their native habitats. These polyphagous herbivores are in turn attacked by a parasitoid community containing many generalists. Many of these polyphagous parasitoids continue to use alternate hosts occurring on trees and shrubs. These findings are discussed in light of current ecological and evolutionary theory regarding the factors that structure parasitoid communities. Because parasitoid species richness is positively correlated with overall impact on host populations, maintaining the largest realized parasitoid community should maximize the impact of parasitoids on agricultural pests. In this regard, conservation of generalist parasitoids in agroecosystems is potentially important and may require the preservation of habitats that support their alternate hosts.
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Conserving Parasitoid Communities of Native Pests: Implications for Agricultural Landscape Structure
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