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Full-Text Articles in Entomology

Regenerative Agriculture Effects On Invertebrate And Bird Communities And Insect-Provided Ecosystem Services, Alex Michels Jan 2022

Regenerative Agriculture Effects On Invertebrate And Bird Communities And Insect-Provided Ecosystem Services, Alex Michels

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conventional agricultural practices can have unintended consequences on the environment and wildlife. Insects and birds are declining at rapid rates around the world, and the current conventional agricultural paradigm is a major driver through habitat loss and the intensification of production. Invertebrates in agroecosystems provide services to both farmers and the rest of society. Regenerative systems may promote the functioning of an agroecosystem by influencing invertebrate abundance, diversity, and ecosystem services and mitigate bird and insect declines through conservation practices that increase soil health, reduce disturbances, and increase biological diversity. Here I address knowledge gaps of the effects of regenerative …


Maximizing Ecosystem Services Provided To The New Oil Crop Brassica Carinata Through Landscape And Arthropod Diversity, Shane Stiles Jan 2019

Maximizing Ecosystem Services Provided To The New Oil Crop Brassica Carinata Through Landscape And Arthropod Diversity, Shane Stiles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prairies, once spanning the Upper Midwest, have now largely been replaced by agriculture. The lack of resources available to pollinators in agricultural fields and the practices employed by farmers to maximize yield has led to a decline in insect and pollinator diversity. There is a need to better understand how ecosystem services provided by a diverse insect community scale to current farming practices as they relate to crop yield. We sought to explain how landscape heterogeneity relates to insect and pollinator diversity, as well as how insect diversity relates to crop yield across common farming practices. To evaluate how farming …


Insecticidal Seed And In-Furrow Treatment Recommendations For Soybean And Sunflower, Brady Hauswedell Jan 2018

Insecticidal Seed And In-Furrow Treatment Recommendations For Soybean And Sunflower, Brady Hauswedell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the 2016 and 2017 growing season, field research experiments were replicated across South Dakota. Many times seed treatments are used prophylactic, which is neither good for the producers or the environment. Producers will be able to reduce production costs, if they only use a seed treatment when necessary. The purpose of the first experiment was to determine the effects of seed treatments in combination with planting date and seeding rate on soybean yield. To determine the effects, two years of field data from four eastern South Dakota locations were compared. Within each year and location we compared two planting …


Interactive Effects Of Cover Crops, Invertebrate Communities And Soil Health In Corn Production Systems, Claire Lacanne Jan 2017

Interactive Effects Of Cover Crops, Invertebrate Communities And Soil Health In Corn Production Systems, Claire Lacanne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The adoption of regenerative farming practices is gaining traction, but the costs and benefits are not often considered on a systems level. Encouraging biodiversity and soil health is the goal of many agricultural practices used in regenerative farming; regenerative systems employ practices which abide by the two main principles of increasing biodiversity and decreasing disturbance, with the goal of encouraging ecosystem functioning to minimize inputs and maximize the productivity of a farm. I examined the management of corn (Zea mays) fields across four states in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. Regenerative systems in this study …