Assistant Professor University of Georgia Athens, Georgia
This talk examines how numerous environmental factors interact to shape natural pest suppression on organic farms. With networks of hundreds of collaborating farmers in the US Pacific Northwest and Southeast, we untangle where biodiversity functions and where it fails in the real world. We find context-dependent links between evenness across trophic levels (among weeds, insects, and soils), and consider how we might improve the predictability of biocontrol services by cultivating balance.
