When does alternative food promote biological pest control

That alternative food, whether or not provided by a plant or introduced artificially, promotes biological pest control via its effect on the predators, is not immediately obvious. On the one hand it enhances survival, reproduction and searching. On the other hand it may reduce the rate of predation, which is the case when alternative food and prey are substitutable – as opposed to complementary – food sources. Moreover, it is not immediately obvious how the impact of alternative food on the outcome of biological pest control differs depending on the type of dynamics (e.g., equilibrium vs. transient dynamics), the type of predator (e.g., stagerelated consumption and life history effects of alternative food), the spatial structure of the environment (e.g., source-sink, metapopulation) and food web structure (presence of hyperpredators or intraguild predators). We review the conditions under which alternative food can lead to either prey/pest extermination, to a decline of the prey/pest towards a positive, asymptotic density or to no effect on prey/pest density at all.

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