On California's central coast,
vegetable producers are establishing hedgerows, made up of native perennial
trees, shrubs and herbs, to improve conservation biological control (CBC). Theoretically,
perennial vegetation can provide stable refugia and food resources that can
enhance arthropod diversity in highly disturbed, annual crop systems. However, two critical criteria for
assessing the CBC potential of hedgerows are that key natural enemies are
enhanced and that these insects disperse into crop fields to attack pests of
agricultural importance. Additionally, the enhancement of natural enemies
should outweigh the possible exacerbation of pest levels due to hedgerows. In
2005 and 2006, we used biweekly vacuum samples to monitor key natural enemies
and pests of vegetable systems on common hedgerow plants, Achillea
millefolium, Baccharis pilularis, Ceanothus spp., Eriogonum giganteum,
Heteromeles arbutifolia, and Rhamnus
californica, at each of five hedgerow sites
adjacent to commercial vegetable fields. We quantified plant bloom rates as an
indicator of nectar and pollen resource. To track dispersal patterns of pests
and natural enemies from hedgerows into adjacent vegetable fields, in 2006, we sprayed hedgerows with fluorescent pigment to mark
foraging insects, captured them in the fields with sticky traps at different
distances from the hedgerow, and determined the proportion of marked
individuals using a microscope and UV light. Results indicate that (1)
arthropod natural enemy and pest species are present in hedgerows, (2) natural
enemies and pests are distributed differently across plant species, often based
on floral resources, (3) natural enemies are more abundant than pests on
hedgerows and on certain plants, like Baccharis
pilularis, and (4) natural enemies and
pests disperse at least 100m from hedgerows into adjacent crop fields. We
discuss the implications of these results for CBC.