Bats and apple orchards: towards an integrated pest management
To reduce arboriculture reliance on pesticides, a promising solution is to promote the presence of natural enemies already living around, i.e. animals that eat crop-damaging insects. This is referred to as conservation biological control or integrated pest management.
Bats are valuable natural ennemies: every night, they can consume 40 to 125% of their own weight in insects, or one to ten kilograms per year per individual, depending on the species. They could therefore play an important role in controlling apple tree pests (such as the codling moth, the oriental fruit moth and the apple blossom beetle), but their effectiveness in Europe remains poorly understood. Furthermore, their populations are in decline, making their protection increasingly urgent.
Project goals:
This project evaluates how bats can contribute to the protection of orchard by analysing three aspects:
- Their action on pests insects: Which insect pests do they actually eat? What is their impact on pest populations?
- The influence of agricultural practices and the landscape: How do farming methods and the environment surrounding orchards affect the presence of bats and of their prey?
- Concrete guidelines: How to design and manage orchards and their surroundings to sustainably promote these natural predators?
This project gathers researchers, technical institutes and biodiversity stakeholders to address an issue that is both agricultural, ecological and societal.
This project is funded by the French Office for Biodiversity and takes place from 2024 to 2029.
