EFFECTS OF FLORAL DIVERSIFICATION ON ARTHROPOD COMMUNITY COMPOSITION, ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND PLANT REPRODUCTION IN THE EDAMAME AGROECOSYSTEM

Abstract

Balancing agricultural productivity with ecological sustainability is a major challenge of modern agriculture. Floral diversification schemes, such as flowering margins and intercropping, are increasingly used to enhance biodiversity and restore ecosystem services. Many studies have focused on crop supplementation strategies and their taxon-specific or yield effects. Building upon and expanding them, this dissertation took a broader approach by connecting metrics of crop and wild plant reproduction, and sampling multiple arthropod feeding guilds through diverse collection techniques. In doing so, I highlight the complex interactions among feeding guilds, each responding uniquely to the addition of floral resources within the agroecosystem. Further, few studies have concomitantly quantified the effects of enhanced floral diversity on natural enemy and pollinator diversity and their efficacy within the crop field and adjacent habitats. As such, the objectives of this dissertation were to quantify the positive and negative effects of combining floral diversification schemes on multiple components of the agroecosystem, including crop success (Chapter 1), arthropod-mediated ecosystem services and yield within the crop (Chapter 2), and plant-insect interactions in contiguous non-crop “wild” plant communities (Chapter 3). My research demonstrates that the ecological and plant reproductive effects of floral diversification are complex, and provides insight into how plant communities can be managed to enhance the conservation of beneficial arthropod communities in the agroecosystem.