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Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Aug 31;289(1981):20221316.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1316. Epub 2022 Aug 17.

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

Diego V Anjos  1 , Alejandro Tena  2 , Arleu Barbosa Viana-Junior  3 , Raquel L Carvalho  4 , Helena Torezan-Silingardi  1 , Kleber Del-Claro  1 , Ivette Perfecto  5
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The effects of ants on pest control: a meta-analysis

Diego V Anjos et al. Proc Biol Sci. .

Abstract

Environmental impacts of conventional agriculture have generated interest in sustainable agriculture. Biological pest control is a fundamental tool, and ants are key players providing ecological services, as well as some disservices. We have used a meta-analytical approach to investigate the contribution of ants to biological control, considering their effects on pest and natural enemy abundance, plant damage and crop yield. We also evaluated whether the effects of ants are modulated by traits of ants, pests and other natural enemies, as well as by field size, crop system and experiment duration. Overall (considering all meta-analyses), from 52 studies on 17 different crops, we found that ants decrease the abundance of non-honeydew-producing pests, decrease plant damage and increase crop yield (services). In addition, ants decrease the abundance of natural enemies, mainly the generalist ones, and increase honeydew-producing pest abundance (disservices). We show that the pest control and plant protection provided by ants are boosted in shaded crops compared to monocultures. Furthermore, ants increase crop yield in shaded crops, and this effect increases with time. Finally, we bring new insights such as the importance of shaded crops to ant services, providing a good tool for farmers and stakeholders considering sustainable farming practices.

Keywords: beneficial insects; crop management; herbivory; productivity; sustainability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Global distribution of the number of studies considering the effects of ants on the abundance of pests and natural enemies, plant damage and crop yield. Dots indicate the country and dot size represents the number of studies. The grey gradient represents the total number of different crops included in all databases. (b) Overall effect of ants on the abundance of pests and natural enemies, plant damage and crop yield. Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals are shown. In parenthesis, the number of effect sizes included in each of the analyses separately. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
(a,b) Effect of ants on pest abundance considering (a) pest type (honeydew-producing or non-honeydew-producing) (b) and pest group. (c,d) Effect of ants on plant damage considering (c) pest type and (d) pest group. Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals are shown. In parenthesis, the number of effect sizes included in each of the analyses, note that the x-axis scales are different for (a), (b), (c) and (d). (Online version in colour.)
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Effect of ants on (a) abundance of non-honeydew-producing pests, (b) plant damage and (c) crop yield analysed by crop system. Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals are shown. In parentheses are the number of cases included in each of the analyses; note that the x-axis scales are different for (a), (b) and (c). (Online version in colour.)
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Effect of ants considering the impact of pest specialization on natural enemy abundance. Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals are shown. In parenthesis, the number of effect sizes included in each of the analyses.(Online version in colour.)
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Effect of ants on crop yield (n = 45, from six studies) analysed by the duration of experiment. Results were obtained with single meta-regressions. (Online version in colour.)
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