Resource overlap and infrequent predation on key pests show vulnerability in cotton biological control services

Promoting arthropod biodiversity to increase ecosystem services through ecological intensification is a challenge for agriculture. And recent evidence suggests that standard pesticide applications not only harm natural enemies but may also fail to deliver long-term pest control solutions. To fuel ecological intensification and build predictive frameworks for pest management incorporating estimates of pest abundance, natural enemy abundance and their associated interactions is essential. Within this framework, there is a need to shift the focus from a single pest and predator to consider the community of predatory arthropods that interact with communities of prey. We took a network-based approach to investigate community interactions of predatory arthropods that feed on key pests and alternative prey in cotton over a three-year period. We merged prey activity, generalist predator communities collected from cotton canopies, and reconstructed trophic interactions with DNA detection frequencies estimated from molecular gut content analysis. Overall, many predator diets overlap, resulting in similar foraging patterns on groups of cotton pests. Moreover, predation on key cotton pests, such as stink bugs and white flies, was low. Therefore, ecological intensification that increases specialized arthropod predators within the community should improve biological control service delivery.