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Lookup NU author(s): Rosy Christopher, Dr Rebecca Wright, Dr Fredric WindsorORCiD, Dr Jordan CuffORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Conservation biocontrol is crucial for crop pest management, but the impact of agricultural management practices on natural enemies of crop pests is poorly characterised. The timing of crop sowing could impact arthropod communities by altering basal resource availability and quality, manifesting in altered nutrient availability for herbivorous arthropods and cascading impacts to natural enemy fitness and function. This study investigates how the timing of crop sowing impacts arthropod predator nutrition and whether associated differences relate to changes in prey availability. Arthropod predators and their prey were collected from adjacent plots of winter- and spring-sown wheat. The biochemical macronutrient (carbohydrate, lipid and protein) content of predators was determined by colorimetric assays and compared between winter- and spring-sown crops using multivariate models. Predator nutrient contents were compared to prey availability inferred using null network models based on both recent and current prey abundances. The nutrient contents of arthropod predators differed significantly between winter- and spring-sown wheat, driven by differences in carbohydrate content, and prey abundances similarly differed, but neither recent nor current prey availability explained differences in predator nutrition. These findings may indicate that prey quality, rather than identity, changes with the developmental stages of crops sown at different times. The different nutritional states of predators in crops sown at different times may have important implications for the spillover of natural enemies of crop pests between crops.
Author(s): Christopher R, Wright R, Windsor FM, Cuff JP
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Bulletin of Entomological Research
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 15/06/2026
Acceptance date: 26/05/2026
Date deposited: 29/05/2026
ISSN (print): 0007-4853
ISSN (electronic): 1475-2670
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000748532610114X
DOI: 10.1017/S000748532610114X
Data Access Statement: All data and code are openly available via Zenodo: https:// doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17911631.
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