Birds And Bats Provide Natural Pest Control To Vineyards
There are ways to grow food crops without poisoning the soil and landscape with chemical pesticides – by relying on the help of birds and bats!
Vineyards and village church in Aszofoe at Lake Balaton, Hungary.
Intensive agriculture increases food production but it also damages land through habitat loss, deforestation, and soil degradation. As farmers work to meet the needs of a rapidly growing – and hungry – human population, natural ecosystems such as forests and grasslands are converted into agricultural production and farmland, dramatically reducing biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Vineyards – although not essential to feeding hungry humans – are economically and culturally important farmlands that are under threat from the attentions of numerous pests and diseases. Yet only a small number of vineyards are managed using sustainable practices. Further, climate change is enhancing the threat of arthropod pests and diseases, thanks to the increase in unusual weather patterns.
Some vineyards respond to these threats by using more chemical pesticides to keep these pests under control. But outside of breeding pesticide-resistant arthropod pests, these methods don't work well in the long run and, in fact, these chemicals end up accumulating in the landscape and poisoning more than just wildlife and people: they actually accelerate climate change (more here).
Meanwhile, vineyards can support diverse and abundant communities of arthropod-munching predators that deliver effective natural pest control services. Birds and bats, in particular, play a key role by consuming large quantities of insect and arthropod pests. But peculiarly, their contribution to biological pest control – especially in European permanent crops, such as vineyards – remains understudied.
An international study was recently published that makes some progress towards understanding the contributions of birds and bats to natural arthropod control in vineyards. This study was conducted in Hungary, in the western part of the Transdanubian Mountains (Tapolca Basin and Balaton Uplands) and the southern part of the Little Hungarian Plain (Marcal Basin). To conduct this study, the research team selected 12 vineyards (which grow 10 grape varieties; one or two varieties per plantation), six with organic management, and another six with integrated pest management (IPM).
IPM, also known as integrated pest control (IPC), uses both chemical and non-chemical methods for the control of pests. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the goal of IPM is to 'keep pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically justified and reduce or minimize risks to human health and the environment. IPM emphasizes the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agro-ecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms' (ref).
For IPM vineyards, limited chemical inputs are based on monitoring to maintain pest populations below crop injury levels (ref).
In contrast to IPM vineyards, organic vineyards which, according to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, only comprise 3.2% of all Hungarian vineyards (ref) were managed without any applications of herbicides, synthetic insecticides or fertilizers. These organic vineyards typically had smaller areas and yields, and supported a greater diversity of vegetation.
F I G U R E 1 : (a) Spatial arrangement of plots, bat acoustic recorders, bird observation points ... More and pheromone traps within vineyards; (b) grape plants used for arthropod sampling and leaf herbivory, fruit damage and predation measurements within plots.
The researchers classified the study vineyards as either 'forested' or 'non-forested' according to their composition and configuration within 500 and 1000 m radius buffers (Figure 1). At both spatial scales, forested landscapes had the highest share of deciduous forests and the greatest connectivity of forest patches, hedgerows, and large groups of trees, whereas non-forested landscapes had a relatively large proportion of arable lands and the greatest vineyard-forest distances. Altogether, the researchers identified three vineyard replications for each factor combination (i.e. organic and forested, organic and non-forested, IPM and forested, IPM and non-forested). The distance between study vineyards was between 1 and 38 km (Figure 1).
The researcher team used exclosures in study vineyards to investigate the effect of birds and bats on arthropod pests affecting ecosystem functions and crop yield considering the local management schemes and contrasting landscape heterogeneity of the vineyards.
Grapevines inside a cage used for the exclusion of birds and bats. (Credit: Dávid Korányi)
The team also collected abundance data of the European grapevine moth, Lobesia botrana, a key grape pest, alongside insects that feed on plants and predatory arthropods in the grapevine canopy, and quantified fruit and leaf damage and other sorts of damages associated with these groups.
Grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) specimens caught with a pheromone trap. (Credit: Dávid Korányi)
As you might expect, vineyards located near forested landscapes had greater bird and bat activity in spring. Although management practices had no measurable effect on the numbers of birds and bats, organic vineyards hosted more canopy-dwelling arthropods and faced greater leaf herbivory – although there was higher predation pressure on caterpillars in organic vineyards.
Did birds and bats reduce fruit damage? Yes: the fruits and leaves on the vines grown in the exclusion treatments consistently showed higher damages, highlighting the ecological and economic value of birds and bats as natural pest control agents.
The numbers and diversity of insectivorous birds and bats were greater in vineyards located close to forested areas.
'The presence of these predators can be promoted by maintaining connected landscapes with native deciduous forest patches, hedgerows, and small groups of trees that offer abundant food sources and suitable nesting or roosting sites,' the study's lead author, landscape ecologist Dávid Korányi, said in a statement. Dr Korányi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Ecological Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The study also underscores the importance of local vineyard management in pest control, particularly when the vineyard is organic, since such practices support both beneficial arthropods and natural pest predation in vineyards.
Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) is a widespread bird that can be found throughout Europe, Asia, North ... More Africa and northern Sub-Saharan Africa. This bird feeds mainly on arthropods and their larvae. (Credit: Artemy Voikhansky / CC BY-SA)
Source:
Dávid Korányi, Sándor Zsebők, András Báldi, Mattia Brambilla, Máté Varga, and Péter Batáry (2025). Forest cover enhances pest control by birds and bats independently of vineyard management intensity, Journal of Applied Ecology | doi:10.1111/1365-2664.70094
NOTE: questions emailed to the study's lead author, Dávid Korányi, were not unanswered.
© Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | LinkTr.ee
Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | MeWe | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tumblr | Twitter
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
TechCrunch
5 hours ago
- TechCrunch
How one biotech startup is betting on cows and winning over investors
Cow burps are a climate problem, and one startup wants to reprogram them. Livestock are a major source of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. While plenty of startups are trying to tackle the issue with seaweed feed, synthetic additives, or carbon offsets, one biotech founder is taking a more fundamental approach: changing what happens inside the cow's gut. Hoofprint Biome is using enzymes to rewire the cow's microbiome from the inside out, cutting methane production and improving feed efficiency along the way. The company just raised a $15 million Series A round from investors including Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, and they're just getting started. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Tim De Chant sat down with Kathryn Polkoff, co-founder and CEO of Hoofprint Biome, to talk through it all. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How enzymes and AI are helping fight climate change (seriously). What it takes to raise money for biotech in a sea of SaaS. Why thinking like a farmer, rather than a climate scientist, was Polkoff's superpower. As she put it, 'That'd be like if you were engineering a car but had never changed the engine — that's where all the energy comes from.' The future of methane reduction and feed efficiency at scale. Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned. Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes here.
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Forbes
Birds And Bats Provide Natural Pest Control To Vineyards
There are ways to grow food crops without poisoning the soil and landscape with chemical pesticides – by relying on the help of birds and bats! Vineyards and village church in Aszofoe at Lake Balaton, Hungary. Intensive agriculture increases food production but it also damages land through habitat loss, deforestation, and soil degradation. As farmers work to meet the needs of a rapidly growing – and hungry – human population, natural ecosystems such as forests and grasslands are converted into agricultural production and farmland, dramatically reducing biodiversity and ecosystem services. Vineyards – although not essential to feeding hungry humans – are economically and culturally important farmlands that are under threat from the attentions of numerous pests and diseases. Yet only a small number of vineyards are managed using sustainable practices. Further, climate change is enhancing the threat of arthropod pests and diseases, thanks to the increase in unusual weather patterns. Some vineyards respond to these threats by using more chemical pesticides to keep these pests under control. But outside of breeding pesticide-resistant arthropod pests, these methods don't work well in the long run and, in fact, these chemicals end up accumulating in the landscape and poisoning more than just wildlife and people: they actually accelerate climate change (more here). Meanwhile, vineyards can support diverse and abundant communities of arthropod-munching predators that deliver effective natural pest control services. Birds and bats, in particular, play a key role by consuming large quantities of insect and arthropod pests. But peculiarly, their contribution to biological pest control – especially in European permanent crops, such as vineyards – remains understudied. An international study was recently published that makes some progress towards understanding the contributions of birds and bats to natural arthropod control in vineyards. This study was conducted in Hungary, in the western part of the Transdanubian Mountains (Tapolca Basin and Balaton Uplands) and the southern part of the Little Hungarian Plain (Marcal Basin). To conduct this study, the research team selected 12 vineyards (which grow 10 grape varieties; one or two varieties per plantation), six with organic management, and another six with integrated pest management (IPM). IPM, also known as integrated pest control (IPC), uses both chemical and non-chemical methods for the control of pests. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the goal of IPM is to 'keep pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically justified and reduce or minimize risks to human health and the environment. IPM emphasizes the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agro-ecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms' (ref). For IPM vineyards, limited chemical inputs are based on monitoring to maintain pest populations below crop injury levels (ref). In contrast to IPM vineyards, organic vineyards which, according to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, only comprise 3.2% of all Hungarian vineyards (ref) were managed without any applications of herbicides, synthetic insecticides or fertilizers. These organic vineyards typically had smaller areas and yields, and supported a greater diversity of vegetation. F I G U R E 1 : (a) Spatial arrangement of plots, bat acoustic recorders, bird observation points ... More and pheromone traps within vineyards; (b) grape plants used for arthropod sampling and leaf herbivory, fruit damage and predation measurements within plots. The researchers classified the study vineyards as either 'forested' or 'non-forested' according to their composition and configuration within 500 and 1000 m radius buffers (Figure 1). At both spatial scales, forested landscapes had the highest share of deciduous forests and the greatest connectivity of forest patches, hedgerows, and large groups of trees, whereas non-forested landscapes had a relatively large proportion of arable lands and the greatest vineyard-forest distances. Altogether, the researchers identified three vineyard replications for each factor combination (i.e. organic and forested, organic and non-forested, IPM and forested, IPM and non-forested). The distance between study vineyards was between 1 and 38 km (Figure 1). The researcher team used exclosures in study vineyards to investigate the effect of birds and bats on arthropod pests affecting ecosystem functions and crop yield considering the local management schemes and contrasting landscape heterogeneity of the vineyards. Grapevines inside a cage used for the exclusion of birds and bats. (Credit: Dávid Korányi) The team also collected abundance data of the European grapevine moth, Lobesia botrana, a key grape pest, alongside insects that feed on plants and predatory arthropods in the grapevine canopy, and quantified fruit and leaf damage and other sorts of damages associated with these groups. Grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) specimens caught with a pheromone trap. (Credit: Dávid Korányi) As you might expect, vineyards located near forested landscapes had greater bird and bat activity in spring. Although management practices had no measurable effect on the numbers of birds and bats, organic vineyards hosted more canopy-dwelling arthropods and faced greater leaf herbivory – although there was higher predation pressure on caterpillars in organic vineyards. Did birds and bats reduce fruit damage? Yes: the fruits and leaves on the vines grown in the exclusion treatments consistently showed higher damages, highlighting the ecological and economic value of birds and bats as natural pest control agents. The numbers and diversity of insectivorous birds and bats were greater in vineyards located close to forested areas. 'The presence of these predators can be promoted by maintaining connected landscapes with native deciduous forest patches, hedgerows, and small groups of trees that offer abundant food sources and suitable nesting or roosting sites,' the study's lead author, landscape ecologist Dávid Korányi, said in a statement. Dr Korányi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Ecological Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The study also underscores the importance of local vineyard management in pest control, particularly when the vineyard is organic, since such practices support both beneficial arthropods and natural pest predation in vineyards. Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops) is a widespread bird that can be found throughout Europe, Asia, North ... More Africa and northern Sub-Saharan Africa. This bird feeds mainly on arthropods and their larvae. (Credit: Artemy Voikhansky / CC BY-SA) Source: Dávid Korányi, Sándor Zsebők, András Báldi, Mattia Brambilla, Máté Varga, and Péter Batáry (2025). Forest cover enhances pest control by birds and bats independently of vineyard management intensity, Journal of Applied Ecology | doi:10.1111/1365-2664.70094 NOTE: questions emailed to the study's lead author, Dávid Korányi, were not unanswered. © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | MeWe | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tumblr | Twitter
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
The numbers of gray whales migrating along the California coast continue to plummet
The number of gray whales migrating along the California coast has plummeted again this year, dropping to levels not seen since the 1970s, according to federal officials. There are now likely fewer than 13,000 gray whales migrating along the North American Pacific coast — fewer than half the population's 27,000 peak in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although a single cause for the population shrinkage has not been determined, scientists believe it is likely the result of a changing climate and its impact on the animals' Arctic and subarctic food supply. This year, scientists in Mexico reported ominous indicators as they observed gray whales wintering in the shallow, warm, protected lagoons of the Baja California Peninsula. They said that very few calves had been born, and that many adult whales were dying. The pattern has since continued, with U.S. researchers saying they observed only 85 calves migrating north to the whales' Arctic feeding grounds. That's the lowest number of calves counted since researchers began keeping records in 1994. In addition, 47 whales have died along the U.S. Pacific coast this year. Although this number is smaller than the 122 that perished in 2019, the population is now much smaller than it was at that time. Twenty of the whales that have died since March 30 expired in San Francisco Bay, according to the Sausalito, Calif.-based Marine Mammal Center. The bay historically was not visited by this cetacean species. Researchers aren't sure why gray whales began frequenting San Francisco Bay, but have suggested they may do it when they are looking for food. Gray whales tend to summer in Arctic waters, where they gorge themselves on tiny, mud-dwelling invertebrates such as worms and shrimp-like critters called amphipods. During typical years of food abundance, the whales would fill themselves up and fast as they migrated 10,000 miles south to their wintering grounds in the lagoons of the Baja peninsula. They wouldn't eat again until the following summer. But in recent years, observers along the coast and in the bay have seen gray whales exhibiting behaviors suggestive of foraging and feeding — an indication that they may be short on fuel. According to a news release this month by the NOAA, one of the most concerning aspects of these latest numbers is the continued population drop since 2019. While these whales have faced population shrinkages in the past, they tended to rebound after a few years. "The environment may now be changing at a pace or in ways that is testing the time-honored ability of the population to rapidly rebound while it adjusts to a new ecological regime,' NOAA biologist David Weller said in the release. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
