Ecosystem services, integrated pest management and sustainable agriculture

Approximately 10.000 years ago, some human communities left their nomad life to form large sedentary settlements on all continents. This shift involved creating agricultural lands to obtain the necessary food, continuously expanding to maintain growing populations. More than 5,000 million hectares of the terrestrial surface are now used for crops and grazing areas, increasing in more than 1.000 million new hectares within the next 50 years, especially in developing countries. Therefore, fighting insect pests has been one of the major challenges in agriculture worldwide, being the biological control or the Integrated Pest Management practices, some respectful and cost-effective ways to prevent and overcome this problem, working towards implementing sustainable agriculture. Bats, among other animals, are well known as essential arthropod predators worldwide and, in the last decades, studies focused on the role of bats as natural controllers of agricultural pests are increasing significantly. Since the 2010s, we have been assessing the state of knowledge about bats’ role as pest controllers at a global level, synthesizing the evidence of this process (quite intensively in the Ebro Delta in rice paddies, but also in central Spain, Madagascar, Mexico and the Mauritius Islands) and compiling recommendations for their future application.

References

• Montauban, C., Mas, M., Wangensteen, O. S., i Monteys, V. S., Fornós, D. G., Mola, X. F., & López-Baucells, A. (2021). Bats as natural samplers: First record of the invasive pest rice water weevil Lissorhoptrus oryzophilus in the Iberian Peninsula. Crop Protection, 141, 105427.
• Puig-Montserrat, X., Mas, M., Flaquer, C., Tuneu-Corral, C., & López-Baucells, A. (2021). Benefits of organic olive farming for the conservation of gleaning bats. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 313, 107361.
• Puig Montserrat, X., Flaquer, C., Gómez Aguilera, N., Burgas, A., Mas, M., Tuneu, C., ... & López Baucells, A. (2020). Bats actively prey on mosquitoes and other deleterious insects in rice paddies: Potential impact on human health and agriculture. Pest Management Science, 76(11), 3759-3769.
• Kemp, J., López-Baucells, A., Rocha, R., Wangensteen, O. S., Andriatafika, Z., Nair, A., & Cabeza, M. (2019). Bats as potential suppressors of multiple agricultural pests: A case study from Madagascar. Agriculture, ecosystems & environment, 269, 88-96.
• Puig-Montserrat, X., Torre, I., López-Baucells, A., Guerrieri, E., Monti, M. M., Ràfols-García, R., ... & Flaquer, C. (2015). Pest control service provided by bats in Mediterranean rice paddies: linking agroecosystems structure to ecological functions. Mammalian Biology, 80(3), 237-245.