Abstract
Abstract
Globally insects are in decline, with the transformation of natural areas for agriculture one of the most important drivers of this decline. Yet, insects play an important role in regulating ecosystem services such as pollination, soil fertility and pest suppression, so their conservation within agricultural areas is critical. We examined comparative impacts of traditional small-scale low input farming versus large-scale conventional farming systems, and mono-cropped versus inter-cropped systems in Kenyan maize fields on predator, ant and herbivore arthropod species richness and composition. We also considered the value of hedgerows and percentage of surrounding maize cover for arthropod conservation. As expected, traditional farming retained higher herbivore species richness, evenness and abundance, as well as higher predator abundance compared to conventional farming. Percentage maize cover was positively correlated to ant species richness, predator and herbivore abundance, as well as determining species assemblage composition for ants and herbivores. Hedgerow volume and the comparison of mono- vs inter-cropping were important predictors for predator evenness. These results suggest that the low input farming systems retain far higher arthropod numbers, although this does not seem to be due to the use of intercropping on the farms. Rather it seems that hedgerows play an important role in maintaining arthropods. While higher maize coverage surrounding the farm increases the species and abundance of arthropods in the fields, this is most likely due to the high biotope fidelity of arthropods that specialize in open cropping systems such as maize fields.
Implications for insect conservation
The results here are encouraging as the retention of culturally important farming techniques (i.e., the traditional Kenyan farmers) and small improvements, such as the retention of hedgerows, greatly promotes biodiversity in the farmlands.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available in the figshare repository, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12345788.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge farm owners in Kakamega County, Kenya for permitting us to work on their farms; the local administration in Kakamega for permitting our interaction with the farmers and the field assistants for help with sampling and logistical support. The National Museums of Kenya is acknowledged for support in availing the arthropod specimen reference collection, while Stellenbosch University is appreciated for providing institutional support. The University of Nairobi helped in forging inter-institutional collaborative linkages for the project while funds for the project were received from various private individuals. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers with their help and suggestions for improving the manuscript.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection was conducted by NEO and analysis were performed by JSP. The first draft of the manuscript was written by NEO and all authors commented on preliminary versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Otieno, N.E., Jacobs, S.M. & Pryke, J.S. Small-scale traditional maize farming fosters greater arthropod diversity value than conventional maize farming. J Insect Conserv 26, 477–489 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-021-00330-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-021-00330-x