UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Shokoohi, AlirezaSubject: search.filters.subject.Agriculture

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    ENHANCING BIOLOGICAL CONTROL BY GROUND BEETLES (COLEOPTERA: CARABIDAE) THROUGH AGRICULTURAL DRAINAGE DITCH MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
    (2024) Shokoohi, Alireza; Lamp, William; Entomology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The establishment of semi-natural habitats on crop field margins is an increasingly popular integrated pest management (IPM) tool for conservation biological control of crop pests, decreasing reliance on harmful chemical pesticides. Agricultural drainage ditches are uncropped areas built to mitigate flooding on farms, but they may also provide suitable habitats for beneficial arthropods such as ground beetles, which are generalist predators of many common plant and invertebrate pests. In this study, I aimed to evaluate the potential of drainage ditches as natural habitats that promote biological control by ground beetles. To do this, my objectives were (1) to assess the impact of altered ditch management practices on ground beetle communities within a ditch and (2) to investigate ground beetle community composition and dynamics between ditch and adjacent crop field habitats across the Delmarva peninsula. Addition of straw to ditch banks in the fall increased ground beetle numbers by 97% in subsequent years, and ground beetle activity-density in drainage ditches was proportional to activity-density in adjacent fields for most genera. Results of this study suggest that altering drainage ditch management practices may provide additional ecological benefits by enhancing populations of ground beetles, thus reducing pest damage in adjacent crop fields.