Bugs scaring bugs: enemy-risk effects in biological control systems

Abstract

Enemy-risk effects, often referred to as non-consumptive effects (NCEs), are an important feature of predator-prey ecology, but their significance has had little impact on the conceptual underpinning or practice of biological control. We provide an overview of enemy-risk effects in predator-prey interactions, discuss ways in which risk effects may impact biocontrol programs and suggest avenues for further integration of natural enemy ecology and integrated pest management. Enemy-risk effects can have important influences on different stages of biological control programs, including natural enemy selection, efficacy testing and quantification of non-target impacts. Enemy-risk effects can also shape the interactions of biological control with other pest management practices. Biocontrol systems also provide community ecologists with some of the richest examples of behaviourally mediated trophic cascades and demonstrations of how enemy-risk effects play out among species with no shared evolutionary history, important topics for invasion biology and conservation. We conclude that the longstanding use of ecological theory by biocontrol practitioners should be expanded to incorporate enemy-risk effects, and that community ecologists will find many opportunities to study enemy-risk effects in biocontrol settings.

Keywords: Agricultural ecology; behavioural ecology; biological control; enemy-risk effects; natural enemies; non-consumptive effects; pest management; predation risk; predator-prey ecology; trophic cascades.

Figure 1

Demonstration of a particular enemy‐risk effect fitting in to the broader framework we describe in Box 2. An enemy‐risk effect is described by both the stage, beginning with individual response and ending with community effects, as well as by the effects on the abundance, distribution and characteristics of a pest population.