Depicting the impact of an invasive alien crop pest on local ecological networks

Invasive alien herbivore species are a major threat to agriculture because they directly damage crops and induce severe yield losses, but also because they indirectly impact the structure, stability and functioning of native arthropod communities.

Indirect facilitation mechanisms can cause unpredictable outbreaks of native pest species but, surprisingly, they have been rarely studied within arthropod communities.

Within the framework of invasive species management (Regulation EU 1143/2014), understanding pest facilitation mechanisms is a research priority.

This is also because invasive species negatively impact the reliability of agricultural Decision Support Systems, used in sustainable agriculture (Directive 2009/128/EC).

PESTNET aims, as general objective, at developing a novel inter- multidisciplinary and intersectoral approach (field monitoring, DNA metabarcoding, multilayer ecological network analyses, citizen science) to depict the basic and applied ecological consequences of a human-introduced alien crop pest on the invaded trophic network.

The model system used for implementation is represented by the highly invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys, native stink bug species and shared egg parasitoids.

An original two-fold cutting-edge approach is proposed aiming at assessing the following specific objectives: Obj. 1) Evaluation of indirect pest facilitation mediated by host-parasitoid prevalence in non-invaded vs. invaded networks; Obj. 2) Evaluation of stink bug community changes using a mobile monitoring system (app) to estimate spatial trends in stink bugs abundance.

Through the involvement of academic and non academic (industry) partners, the project will provide novel insights on how an invasive herbivore pest of worldwide economic importance is impacting sustainable agriculture by interference with the local arthropod community.