Bradley J. Cardinale*, Chad T. Harvey, Kevin Gross and Anthony R. Ives Department of Zoology, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, WI 53706, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The suppression of agricultural pests has often been proposed as an important service of natural enemy diversity, but few experiments have test...

Beginning in 2000, snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) crops exhibiting virus-like symptoms on the foliage (leaf distortion, yellow and green mottling, and mosaic) were increasing in frequency on a regional scale across the northern United States and Canada (10,20). These crops also produced fewer pods or pods that were either twisted or necrotic (hence unmarketable). Across the Midwest and north...

Creating conditions that enhance the abundance of resident populations of natural enemies in agroecosystems is considered critical to the efficiency of biological control of insect pests. We conducted a study to determine the potential of relay-intercropping for enhancing the abundance of aphidophagous lady beetles in sorghum. A relay-intercropping system consisting of alfalfa, winter wheat, an...