i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to begin by thanking my advisers, Andrea and Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau. Had they not been at Wisconsin, I don't know who else I would have worked with. They have a unique combination of taking their research and their student's work very seriously, while not taking themselves too seriously. Among other things, they taught me how to ask the right questions when conducting research. Indeed it has been an honor and a privilege working with both of them. I thank Jeff Naughton, Marv Solomon and Tehshik Yoon for serving on my thesis committee. They provided valuable advice and feedback. I thank Tehshik in particular for making it to my defense despite his illness that day so I could avoid delaying my graduation

Data from: Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

AbstractThe idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies