Publications by authors named "Brice Giffard"
Article Synopsis
- Agriculture and forestry occupy over 75% of Europe, facing significant challenges from invertebrate pests, which lead to high economic costs.
- The study investigates how the amount of woodlands, permanent grasslands, and crop diversity impact biological pest control in cereal fields and nearby woodlands in south-western France.
- Findings indicate that land cover affects pest control in both ecosystems but in opposing ways, suggesting that increasing landscape diversity could improve predation rates and enhance pest management across both environments.
Article Synopsis
- Soil tillage and herbicide use in agriculture can disrupt soil microbial communities, but the effects of this disruption at large geographical scales are not well-studied.
- Research in vineyards across five European countries showed that while microbial diversity sometimes changed with soil disturbance, the overall shift in community composition was more influenced by location than the type of disturbance.
- Although soil disturbance consistently reduced microbial respiration, its impact on the decomposition of organic matter varied widely between countries, highlighting the challenges of making broad conclusions about microbial responses across different regions.
Article Synopsis
- - Understanding how biodiversity responds to organic farming is crucial for creating sustainable agriculture, as findings show significant variability in its effects.
- - This study compared biodiversity in certified organic and conventional vineyards, finding that specific farming practices impact species abundance more than the overall landscape.
- - While organic farming improved the abundance of some species (like springtails and spiders), it negatively affected pollinators and soil microbes, highlighting the importance of specific farming practices like tillage and pesticide use in shaping biodiversity.
We would like to change the authors' names and email addresses on page 195 of paper [...
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- * Conservation biological control (CBC) is essential for integrated pest management but has not been widely adopted; approaches have often been inconsistent and lacking in strategy.
- * The QuESSA project developed a predictive scoring system for five habitat types to assess their potential for biological control, revealing context-specific results and suggesting tailored habitat designs to enhance natural enemy support for specific agricultural needs.
Article Synopsis
- This research investigates how soil erosion impacts grape yield and quality, focusing on soil functions like water supply, nutrient availability, and biodiversity in European and Turkish vineyards.
- Findings show that degraded soils led to lower grape production and higher sugar levels, affecting plants' water and nutrient uptake due to compaction and reduced fertility.
- The study highlights the declining ability of soil biota to decompose organic matter, while biodiversity among microbial species remains relatively stable due to organic farming practices.
A growing body of evidence from community genetics studies suggests that ecosystem functions supported by plant species richness can also be provided by genetic diversity within plant species. This is not yet true for the diversity-resistance relationship as it is still unclear whether damage by insect herbivores responds to genetic diversity in host plant populations. We developed a manipulative field experiment based on a synthetic community approach, with 15 mixtures of one to four oak (Quercus robur) half-sib families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccording to the associational resistance hypothesis, neighbouring plants are expected to influence both the insect herbivore communities and their natural enemies. However, this has rarely been tested for the effects of canopy trees on herbivory of seedlings. One possible mechanism responsible for associational resistance is the indirect impact of natural enemies on insect herbivory, such as insectivorous birds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF