Taxon-Specific Responses to Temperature, Landscape, and Local Management Challenge Common Strategies for Pest Control in Vineyards

Grape is among the most pesticide treated crops in Europe. To reduce pesticide use, it is increasingly important to enhance pest control by natural enemies. However, the provision of biological control in vineyards is highly context- and taxa-dependent. Here, we selected 60 vineyards across Italy in order to explicitly explore the effect of vineyard management, temperature and landscape composition on arthropod predators, grapevine pests, dummy caterpillar predation, and seed predation. We found that plant cover in the inter-row was lower in dry-warm climates, and it positively affected only the abundance of hoverflies, while the abundance of carabids, ladybugs, harvest spiders and spiders was affected by temperature and the surrounding landscape. Organic management did not affect predators but supported more abundant populations of the pest Erasmoneura vulnerata. Overall, most leafhopper pests showed species specific responses to local management, temperature and the landscape. The abundance of two leafhopper species decreased with increasing semi-natural areas. By contrast, pest control rate and grape damage did not respond to any of the selected drivers. In conclusion, our findings suggest that local vineyard management significantly influences biocontrol and pests, but the effects are taxon specific and shaped by the surrounding landscape and by the temperature, challenging universal strategies. Therefore, we advocate for developing regional strategies for grape protection accounting for local climate and multiple taxa responses.