Vol. 60, 2021

(update: 2021.07.09; 09.16) 

Effects of Farming Systems on Insect Communities in the Paddy Fields of a Simplified Landscape During a Pest-control Intervention

DChao-Nien Koh^1,§, Ming-Chih Chiu^2,3,4,§, Ling-Mu Jaung¹, Yung-Jen Lu¹, and Hsing-Juh Lin^2,*

¹Division of Forest Protection, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Taipei 100, Taiwan. E-mail: nien@tfri.gov.tw (Koh); lmjaung@tfri.gov.tw (Jaung); yungjenlu@gmail.com (Lu)
²Department of Life Sciences and Innovation and Development Center of Sustainable Agriculture, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan. *Correspondence: hjlin@dragon.nchu.edu.tw (Lin)
E-mail: mingchih.chiu@gmail.com (Chiu)
³Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Ehime University, Ehime 790-8577, Japan
⁴Department of Entomology, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan

^§CNK and MCC contributed equally to the work.
Received 13 March 2021 / Accepted 1 July 2021
Communicated by Teng-Chiu Lin

Agricultural intensification is one of the major threats to global biodiversity and ecosystem services. Sustainable management of agricultural lands can reduce these impacts, but few efforts have been made in the context of paddy rice fields, especially in simplified landscapes composed of large monocultures separated by fragments of natural lands, such as in Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia. In this study, during a pest control intervention, we examined the effects of management practices on insect communities under conventional and organic farming systems in the paddy fields of northern Taiwan in 2016. Our results showed that organic practices did not increase the species richness or abundance of the four insect groups (total, predators/parasitoids, pests, and other insects). In addition, the composition of the insect communities did not differ between organic and conventional farming systems. Both the abundance and richness of predator/parasitoid insects were similar between conventional and organic farming systems. The pest abundance in the organic systems could be suppressed by other unmeasured predators and integrated management practices, which showed similar levels to the conventional systems with pesticide applications. The results of this study suggest that farming systems may not influence insect biodiversity in simplified landscapes during pest-control intervention.

Key words: Biodiversity, Conventional production, Organic production, Sustainability, Pesticide.

Citation: Koh CN, Chiu MC, Jaung LM, Lu YJ, Lin HJ. 2021. Effects of farming systems on insect communities in the paddy fields of a simplified landscape during a pest-control intervention. Zool Stud 60:56. doi:10.6620/ZS.2021.60-56.

Supplementary Materials: Fig. S1〡Table S1