Giving Compass' Take:

• According to research from Michigan State University, the spatial arrangement of crop fields, forests, and grasslands does a lot to determine how many critters like spiders and lady beetles show up in a field to eat pests.

• What organizations are doing the most to help small farms protect their fields? How can farms start using alternatives to harmful pesticides? 

• Here's how bats can help reduce pesticide use in farms. 


These tiny invertebrate bodyguards protect crops from pests, making it easier for farms to grow our food.

A new review article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution summarizes recent research into ways landscape configuration affects natural enemies and pest suppression.

“One of the take-homes from our review is that natural enemies can be more abundant when agricultural landscapes are made up of smaller farm fields,” says coauthor Nate Haan, postdoctoral researcher in the Michigan State University entomology department.

“Some natural enemies need resources found in other habitats or in crop field edges. We think when habitat patches are small, they are more likely to find their way back and forth between these habitats and crop fields, or from one crop field into another.”

Haan emphasizes that the exact effects of landscape configuration depend on the natural history of the critter in question.

“A predator that finds everything it needs to survive within a single crop field might not need natural habitats outside that crop field, but there are lots of other insects that need to find nectar or shelter in other places,” Haan says. “For these insects, the spatial arrangement of crop fields and those other habitats can become very important.”

Read the full article on how pest-eaters can help crops by Joy Landis at Futurity.