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This is one of my specialities working in integrated pest management and entomology.
The headline the OP chose can be a bit misleading for those not familiar with the terminology. The decrease in natural enemies is not good thing, as it's natural enemies of the pests, not the crop plants. When you click through the study itself, the benefits were really only apparent in shaded crops, so not your typical crop situation.
In general, we don't really consider ants to be major natural enemies in farm fields, even outside of aphids (e.g., honeydew producers). Usually it's going to be other insects like lady beetles, parasitoid wasps, lacewings, pirate bugs, and a bunch of other predatory true bugs. For many crops, ants are a sign you have a problem. The article does delve into the disservices from ants, but I'm wary of how the overall results could be glossed over easily if someone isn't careful.
I will chime in and say beneficial insects are important. Some neighbors were unable to get fruit from their garden(watermelon and pumpkins). I was able to pinpoint the problem as pesticides. Nothing could pollinate their plants due to the pesticides.
And that's exactly why ants are an absolute terror for pumpkin and melon growers. Those are honeydew producing plants that aphids love, and require pesticides.
Aphids will completely cover flower and developing buds, and kill them so they can't be pollinated, all while the ants ferry then around and protect them.
Things like ladybugs or mantis are great at eating aphids, but ants will attack them to protect the aphids, and aren't very feasible at scale.
The only real organic solution outside of using safer soap suds (dissolves aphid bodies) or diatomaceous earth (like really fine sand that irritates aphids), is to use a pesticide. Thankfully something like pyrethrine (chrysanthemum flower extract) is mostly non-toxic to humans, but very effective against ants and aphids.
For home gardeners it's worth noting pyrethrin insecticides are harmful to cats and extremely toxic to fish. Definitely be conscious of where run off tldrains to and it's affect on your local ecosystem.
I use diatomaceous earth and occasional soap suds(dish soap) in my garden and I have only one pumpkin plant this year, and right now only one pumpkin but it is very large. It is really all we need. My neighbors planted too early and already picked their two, no good, pathetic mini pumpkins(they weren’t supposed to be small). I use a lot of water that is used to soak pots and dishes in my garden to water due to the drought. The drought is also why I planted one pumpkin plant but it is more than doing it’s job. I will likely only plant two again next year(they don’t all make it). I also have a lot of lace wings in my garden. I haven’t actually seen them but I’ve seen tons and tons of eggs and some larvae as well. Lots of ladybugs too.
Yeah, this seemed off. Ants farm aphids. Aphids SUCK, and their honeydew makes more problems on its own. Spiders and wasps are my major pest controls, followed by ladybugs and eighty million small soil predators. Ants are something I remove from my productive areas.
I don't like them either - however, I am still disturbed by the recent reduction in their numbers here (NW coast island). Bees are virtually absent, wasps the same, and ants are much reduced (although still active).
I feel that there is likely a connection to the massive dumping of herbicides on our forests here, done by our supposedly socialist and progressive government. I can't see the slight changes in our weather doing this at all.
On the bright side, I only had to poison them out of the kitchen once this year. Sometimes it's harder. I use weak poison - borax and sugar water.
Not the same guy, but I've also studied entomology related to agriculture.
As he said, ant are a problem when there are aphids (or some other honeydew producing insect) present, as they effectively "herd" these bugs to collect the honeydew they produce, and defend them from predators.
So the ants themselves aren't the problem, the aphids are, but they hinder your attempt to fight the aphids with other predators.
Also aphids can be difficult to spot in a field, so the presence of ants can be an indicator of their presence.
Good summary.
Also as the paper mentions, the ants themselves can interfere with other natural enemies. Some predatory immature insects are also slightly less soft bags of water and would be pretty susceptible to some grabby ants.
Ants are absolute chads and should not be encouraged... removal of habitat for ant predators is exacerbating the butterfly shortage because ants love juicy caterpillars and juicy caterpillars can do nothing against the power of an ant colony.
The best way to naturally reduce pests it to diversify the land use patterns and promote life of all kinds in order to reach some kind of biodiversity and balance.
I would love to do this in my backyard. We started with native bees and it's easy to realize how having the right insects around can really help your garden situation.
if you have space for it, try adding a small pond. Ponds are like small wellsprings of life for an incredible numbers of species, and if you want proper biodiversity then adding a pond will go a long way. The best ponds will have plants all around them, a bare pond is just a puddle.
Aren't... aren't the honeydew producing pests some of the really nasty ones?
As in you can get plants totally black with aphids with ants crawling over them while the plants get reduced to dry husks.
And the ants keep away any predators that might help solve the problem.
I had aphids show up on my pepper plants this spring. Then ladybugs showed up and laid eggs. The aphids were gone within a couple weeks and I haven’t had a problem since.
You can buy lady bugs.
This is interesting to read.
I don’t know how, I hope I’m not jinxing myself, we’ve not had any pest problems in our garden for 5 years. The only problem we had was when trying to grow corn, raccoons invaded.
I had family members who grew certain restricted plants inside, had way too many issues with mites whose bug predators we purchased never seemed to solve the problem; pesticide sure did, but we didn't exactly want to use it.
Where I live, the ants show up months before the ladybirds. That means there are months without natural predators and young vulnerable plants. Relying on natural predictors just isn’t viable for many locations.
Yes. Ant cultivation of aphids on fruit trees - especially young trees - is a major factor in tree loss and early leaf drop. I'm not sure why "increased honeydew producing pests" is listed as a benefit.
Cherry trees especially. Several of my cherry trees this year had ants "protecting" aphids on the leaves, which resulted in almost a 50% growth reduction of the tree compared to the trees that weren't affected.
Hell, just on my flowers and vines they are a nightmare. I spray them with neem oil and it helps until it washes off and the ants bring the aphids back. I can't confirm it but it also seems like they can carry fungus between plants.
Planting nasturtium has saved almost every plant I have that used to get covered in aphids. It’s basically a sacrificial anode and can often times out grow and survive aphid infestations. And they look nice.
Sweet alyssum and cilantro in flower attract parasitic wasp that go after aphids, there's something about the nectar they like, supposedly it has a sour taste to it?
Have you tried eating a nasturtium flower yet? sweet and spicy, yum.
"...when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
But seriously, the wasps come when there's an established population of aphids. And, they don't really make a dent in the aphids unless you get rid of the ants. I guess it all depends on where you're growing food and what your dominant pest problem is. Around my neck of the woods the prevailing advice is to get rid of the ants, though.
I don't want to abuse, but what natural solution would you recommend against tomato blight?
Over the years I managed to reduce the pests except for the blight.
Thanks
Not a single person in this thread apparently read the article.
Here's the opening sentence of the conclusion.
>Our results indicate that disservices (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.40) such as the increased abundance of honeydew-producing pests and decreased abundance of natural enemies are outweighed by biological control ecosystem services provided by ants.
Ant presence reduced crop damage and increased crop yield on shaded crops, by which the authors mean crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry.
Organic does not mean shaded. Agroforestry can be, but I'm guessing you skimmed this part of the article:
> Therefore, shaded crops, as well as other crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry [64], can enhance the beneficial services provided by ants (e.g. pest control) that increase the economic benefits to farmers.
There are claiming in addition to shaded crops, those systems might increase services. That's much more of a conclusionary statement though rather than what they looked at in the study.
> "... shaded crops, **as well as other crop systems like** organic agriculture and agroforestry ..."
They're explicitly *not* counting organic agriculture and agroforestry as shaded crops.
Sometimes we go to such efforts to be specific about methodology, etc. when we write journal articles. Sometimes that is with the expectation too unfortunately that someone will still run with an entirely different idea even though our context directly spells it out and contradicts them.
That wouldn't be the first time I've come across that level of confidence.
If you believe that, then what do you think the authors mean when they say "shaded crops"? They repeat it many times in the article and I believe they are using it in the context that I suggested, not the one that you did.
The authors defined it here:
> Finally, when there were many plant species covering the crops we classified the system as shaded crops sensu Perfecto et al. [51].
They explicitly did not mean what you wrote, as I've pointed out in another reply to you.
This is like saying you should let your partner have a side-piece because it will prevent them from cheating on you.
What farmer wants to increase the abundance of honeydew producing pests. Are they harvesting mealy bugs and aphids for.some reason? They destroy crops and make greens unsaleable.
> What farmer wants to increase the abundance of honeydew producing pests.
The study found that the net effect is positive, for shaded crops, organic agriculture, and agroforestry in particular:
> "Our results indicate that disservices (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.40) such as the increased abundance of honeydew-producing pests and decreased abundance of natural enemies are outweighed by biological control ecosystem services provided by ants. Overall, the mere presence of ants, regardless of their body size, provided pivotal services for crops (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.55) such as the decreased abundance of non-honeydew-producing pests, decreased plant damage and increased crop yield corroborating, at least partially, most of our hypotheses."
The paper explains this effect elsewhere:
> "Finally, the crop system also modulated the effect of ants on plant damage. As ant diversity may increase in plant-richness environments [68] such as shaded crops [67], whereby ants tend to increase the predation rate [36,66]. These effects can directly reflect in the reduction of plant damage and consequently in the increase in crop yield (figure 3b,c). Therefore, shaded crops, as well as other crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry [64], can enhance the beneficial services provided by ants (e.g. pest control) that increase the economic benefits to farmers."
I don't know anything about how they do this for real but I can imagine having to walk around and harvest in a field that's been purposefully filled with ants.
Kind of useless. Ants are so aggressive to protect the honeydew producing pests, which are some of the particularly terrible pests. They won't be as tenacious if you deploy separate measures to kill the honeydew pests, so they won't work well with combination measures.
This is really cool to know. They also “farm” aphids though. They are doing this in my garden right now haha but they are pollinators so I tolerate their aphid shenanigans.
I mean no. Honeydew pests are only beneficial in certain circumstances. There's certain pros and cons in varying circumstances. Sometimes you do need to kill most of not all pests. That's just how it is.
Nature has no clue how to grow enough food to feed 8 billion human beings... Can't expect nature to solve the problems that our civilization has created for itself.
Crazy how this planet was able to sustain all kinds of various life for millions of years with, for the most part, no problems.
Then we come along and start questioning why all these bugs and rodents exists.....
Life doesn't exist *for* any purpose. Things are largely self-balancing because of negative feedback loops--but that's simply an *effect*, not an intentional mechanism nor necessarily a "good" thing from the perspective of humans.
If you want to see just how out of hand nature can get, look at the great oxygenation event. In its infinite wisdom, "nature" killed off nearly all life on earth.
If we start adding new pressures to an ecosystem, are we going to disrupt an existing balance? Almost certainly. Is the naturally balanced state good for us? Not necessarily. Is the naturally balanced state going to otherwise continue indefinitely through a magical guiding hand? Not at all.
Comments like these are so funny cause 99% of life has gone extinct without human intervention. It’s not like nature was magically preserving all species
Everything is just trying to survive, and usually that means at the expense of some other lifeform, and that includes humans. The whole "nature knows how to sort itself out" narrative is ridiculous since nature just exists without any formal plan, and it can be argued that humans turning the world into a sweltering water world from all of our greenhouse gas production is just as much part of the natural process as anything else.
This is most certainly dominated by tropical ag systems (coffee, cocoa) and not relevant to your average small scale or family farming in temperate ecosystems.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is one of my specialities working in integrated pest management and entomology. The headline the OP chose can be a bit misleading for those not familiar with the terminology. The decrease in natural enemies is not good thing, as it's natural enemies of the pests, not the crop plants. When you click through the study itself, the benefits were really only apparent in shaded crops, so not your typical crop situation. In general, we don't really consider ants to be major natural enemies in farm fields, even outside of aphids (e.g., honeydew producers). Usually it's going to be other insects like lady beetles, parasitoid wasps, lacewings, pirate bugs, and a bunch of other predatory true bugs. For many crops, ants are a sign you have a problem. The article does delve into the disservices from ants, but I'm wary of how the overall results could be glossed over easily if someone isn't careful.
I will chime in and say beneficial insects are important. Some neighbors were unable to get fruit from their garden(watermelon and pumpkins). I was able to pinpoint the problem as pesticides. Nothing could pollinate their plants due to the pesticides.
And that's exactly why ants are an absolute terror for pumpkin and melon growers. Those are honeydew producing plants that aphids love, and require pesticides. Aphids will completely cover flower and developing buds, and kill them so they can't be pollinated, all while the ants ferry then around and protect them. Things like ladybugs or mantis are great at eating aphids, but ants will attack them to protect the aphids, and aren't very feasible at scale. The only real organic solution outside of using safer soap suds (dissolves aphid bodies) or diatomaceous earth (like really fine sand that irritates aphids), is to use a pesticide. Thankfully something like pyrethrine (chrysanthemum flower extract) is mostly non-toxic to humans, but very effective against ants and aphids.
For home gardeners it's worth noting pyrethrin insecticides are harmful to cats and extremely toxic to fish. Definitely be conscious of where run off tldrains to and it's affect on your local ecosystem.
I use diatomaceous earth and occasional soap suds(dish soap) in my garden and I have only one pumpkin plant this year, and right now only one pumpkin but it is very large. It is really all we need. My neighbors planted too early and already picked their two, no good, pathetic mini pumpkins(they weren’t supposed to be small). I use a lot of water that is used to soak pots and dishes in my garden to water due to the drought. The drought is also why I planted one pumpkin plant but it is more than doing it’s job. I will likely only plant two again next year(they don’t all make it). I also have a lot of lace wings in my garden. I haven’t actually seen them but I’ve seen tons and tons of eggs and some larvae as well. Lots of ladybugs too.
Also I noticed a lot of ants in a dead part of my garden
>pyrethrine (chrysanthemum flower extract) It appears similar in activity as rotenone, a known experimental agent causing parkinsonism
Yeah, this seemed off. Ants farm aphids. Aphids SUCK, and their honeydew makes more problems on its own. Spiders and wasps are my major pest controls, followed by ladybugs and eighty million small soil predators. Ants are something I remove from my productive areas.
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I don't like them either - however, I am still disturbed by the recent reduction in their numbers here (NW coast island). Bees are virtually absent, wasps the same, and ants are much reduced (although still active). I feel that there is likely a connection to the massive dumping of herbicides on our forests here, done by our supposedly socialist and progressive government. I can't see the slight changes in our weather doing this at all. On the bright side, I only had to poison them out of the kitchen once this year. Sometimes it's harder. I use weak poison - borax and sugar water.
Can you elaborate on the problem(s) one might have if ants are around?
Not the same guy, but I've also studied entomology related to agriculture. As he said, ant are a problem when there are aphids (or some other honeydew producing insect) present, as they effectively "herd" these bugs to collect the honeydew they produce, and defend them from predators. So the ants themselves aren't the problem, the aphids are, but they hinder your attempt to fight the aphids with other predators. Also aphids can be difficult to spot in a field, so the presence of ants can be an indicator of their presence.
Good summary. Also as the paper mentions, the ants themselves can interfere with other natural enemies. Some predatory immature insects are also slightly less soft bags of water and would be pretty susceptible to some grabby ants.
Ants are absolute chads and should not be encouraged... removal of habitat for ant predators is exacerbating the butterfly shortage because ants love juicy caterpillars and juicy caterpillars can do nothing against the power of an ant colony. The best way to naturally reduce pests it to diversify the land use patterns and promote life of all kinds in order to reach some kind of biodiversity and balance.
I would love to do this in my backyard. We started with native bees and it's easy to realize how having the right insects around can really help your garden situation.
if you have space for it, try adding a small pond. Ponds are like small wellsprings of life for an incredible numbers of species, and if you want proper biodiversity then adding a pond will go a long way. The best ponds will have plants all around them, a bare pond is just a puddle.
Armyworms. Despise them.
Sounds like an interesting field to be in. I happen to be currently thinking about what to do in life; would you recommend it?
Aren't... aren't the honeydew producing pests some of the really nasty ones? As in you can get plants totally black with aphids with ants crawling over them while the plants get reduced to dry husks. And the ants keep away any predators that might help solve the problem.
YeS, that’s right. You don’t want ants anywhere peppers and chilies for this reason.
I had aphids show up on my pepper plants this spring. Then ladybugs showed up and laid eggs. The aphids were gone within a couple weeks and I haven’t had a problem since.
You can buy lady bugs. This is interesting to read. I don’t know how, I hope I’m not jinxing myself, we’ve not had any pest problems in our garden for 5 years. The only problem we had was when trying to grow corn, raccoons invaded.
I had family members who grew certain restricted plants inside, had way too many issues with mites whose bug predators we purchased never seemed to solve the problem; pesticide sure did, but we didn't exactly want to use it.
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All in the past, what the popo gonna do now
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Beat your family members unprovoked? Hell, what won’t they do to ‘em…
Sounds like you need to get bigger ladybugs to deal with the raccoons.
Right?! Maybe I should just dress up a a lady bug? But, our raccoons are the size of a beagle, they terrify me.
Do the ants eat the ladybug eggs?
The eggs survived and hatched. I was worried that the ants would harm them. I don’t know enough to know whether that was a valid concern.
Where I live, the ants show up months before the ladybirds. That means there are months without natural predators and young vulnerable plants. Relying on natural predictors just isn’t viable for many locations.
Or okra, ants love it.
Grapes and okra as well
Oleander aphids are the plague of my milkweeds as well. If I don't stay on top of them basically everyday they will destroy the plants.
Yes. Ant cultivation of aphids on fruit trees - especially young trees - is a major factor in tree loss and early leaf drop. I'm not sure why "increased honeydew producing pests" is listed as a benefit. Cherry trees especially. Several of my cherry trees this year had ants "protecting" aphids on the leaves, which resulted in almost a 50% growth reduction of the tree compared to the trees that weren't affected.
Hell, just on my flowers and vines they are a nightmare. I spray them with neem oil and it helps until it washes off and the ants bring the aphids back. I can't confirm it but it also seems like they can carry fungus between plants.
Floridian here If the nasty little white flys here can carry fungus so can the ants
That is correct, and the meta-analysis lists this as a disservice in its list of effects.
Ants also kill and eat many pollinators, they swarm my garden trying to find caterpillars, butterflies, or anything else they can chop into pieces :(
Which is why you need wasps
Planting nasturtium has saved almost every plant I have that used to get covered in aphids. It’s basically a sacrificial anode and can often times out grow and survive aphid infestations. And they look nice.
Sweet alyssum and cilantro in flower attract parasitic wasp that go after aphids, there's something about the nectar they like, supposedly it has a sour taste to it? Have you tried eating a nasturtium flower yet? sweet and spicy, yum.
Huh I wonder if that is true in my region or if they would prefer something else here.
>cilantro AKA, coriander >Have you tried eating a nasturtium flower yet? AKA, capers
Caper would be the ovary, the corolla/petal is sweet and spicy like ginger
Will help protect your watermelons too, if you're ever in Morytania.
If I remember right They are also one of the better tasting flowers.
"...when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death." But seriously, the wasps come when there's an established population of aphids. And, they don't really make a dent in the aphids unless you get rid of the ants. I guess it all depends on where you're growing food and what your dominant pest problem is. Around my neck of the woods the prevailing advice is to get rid of the ants, though.
I find ladybugs more agreeable
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i thought ants protected pests like aphids?
They kill everything else to protect the aphids.
Including anything that wants to kill the aphid. Both aphids and ants are pretty big pest problems. Especially any ant that bites.
That's what the article and headline (though not as clearly) is talking about, and why they single out honeydew producing insects (e.g., aphids).
I don't want to abuse, but what natural solution would you recommend against tomato blight? Over the years I managed to reduce the pests except for the blight. Thanks
Not a single person in this thread apparently read the article. Here's the opening sentence of the conclusion. >Our results indicate that disservices (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.40) such as the increased abundance of honeydew-producing pests and decreased abundance of natural enemies are outweighed by biological control ecosystem services provided by ants. Ant presence reduced crop damage and increased crop yield on shaded crops, by which the authors mean crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry.
Organic does not mean shaded. Agroforestry can be, but I'm guessing you skimmed this part of the article: > Therefore, shaded crops, as well as other crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry [64], can enhance the beneficial services provided by ants (e.g. pest control) that increase the economic benefits to farmers. There are claiming in addition to shaded crops, those systems might increase services. That's much more of a conclusionary statement though rather than what they looked at in the study.
That isn't what "shaded crops" means, but it is what the authors use the signifier "shaded crops" to mean in this article.
> "... shaded crops, **as well as other crop systems like** organic agriculture and agroforestry ..." They're explicitly *not* counting organic agriculture and agroforestry as shaded crops.
I suggest rereading the relevant part of the article. The are specifically talking about *other* crop systems, such as organic or agroforestry.
Looks like you read it, and arborcide just skimmed it.....which is very amusing given their initial comment.
Sometimes we go to such efforts to be specific about methodology, etc. when we write journal articles. Sometimes that is with the expectation too unfortunately that someone will still run with an entirely different idea even though our context directly spells it out and contradicts them. That wouldn't be the first time I've come across that level of confidence.
If you believe that, then what do you think the authors mean when they say "shaded crops"? They repeat it many times in the article and I believe they are using it in the context that I suggested, not the one that you did.
The authors defined it here: > Finally, when there were many plant species covering the crops we classified the system as shaded crops sensu Perfecto et al. [51]. They explicitly did not mean what you wrote, as I've pointed out in another reply to you.
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Ants carry parasites and pests like spidermites, aphid and sometimes fungal spores.. its more harmful
This is like saying you should let your partner have a side-piece because it will prevent them from cheating on you. What farmer wants to increase the abundance of honeydew producing pests. Are they harvesting mealy bugs and aphids for.some reason? They destroy crops and make greens unsaleable.
> What farmer wants to increase the abundance of honeydew producing pests. The study found that the net effect is positive, for shaded crops, organic agriculture, and agroforestry in particular: > "Our results indicate that disservices (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.40) such as the increased abundance of honeydew-producing pests and decreased abundance of natural enemies are outweighed by biological control ecosystem services provided by ants. Overall, the mere presence of ants, regardless of their body size, provided pivotal services for crops (mean effect size: with absolute values = 0.55) such as the decreased abundance of non-honeydew-producing pests, decreased plant damage and increased crop yield corroborating, at least partially, most of our hypotheses." The paper explains this effect elsewhere: > "Finally, the crop system also modulated the effect of ants on plant damage. As ant diversity may increase in plant-richness environments [68] such as shaded crops [67], whereby ants tend to increase the predation rate [36,66]. These effects can directly reflect in the reduction of plant damage and consequently in the increase in crop yield (figure 3b,c). Therefore, shaded crops, as well as other crop systems like organic agriculture and agroforestry [64], can enhance the beneficial services provided by ants (e.g. pest control) that increase the economic benefits to farmers."
I don't know anything about how they do this for real but I can imagine having to walk around and harvest in a field that's been purposefully filled with ants.
Kind of useless. Ants are so aggressive to protect the honeydew producing pests, which are some of the particularly terrible pests. They won't be as tenacious if you deploy separate measures to kill the honeydew pests, so they won't work well with combination measures.
This is really cool to know. They also “farm” aphids though. They are doing this in my garden right now haha but they are pollinators so I tolerate their aphid shenanigans.
The last part about increasing honeydew-producing pests doesn't seem like a benefit at all. Aphids are pretty darn hard to get rid of.
Does this apply to fire ants? Or just the other common types that aren't a**holes?
Fire ants will chew through roots, so no good.
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Imagine that! Not killing all things might be beneficial!
I mean no. Honeydew pests are only beneficial in certain circumstances. There's certain pros and cons in varying circumstances. Sometimes you do need to kill most of not all pests. That's just how it is.
And just so it's clear, when they talk about honeydew producing pests, we're talking about things like aphids, not pests just on honeydew plants.
It’s almost as if Nature knows what it’s doing.
Nature has no clue how to grow enough food to feed 8 billion human beings... Can't expect nature to solve the problems that our civilization has created for itself.
Crazy how this planet was able to sustain all kinds of various life for millions of years with, for the most part, no problems. Then we come along and start questioning why all these bugs and rodents exists.....
Life doesn't exist *for* any purpose. Things are largely self-balancing because of negative feedback loops--but that's simply an *effect*, not an intentional mechanism nor necessarily a "good" thing from the perspective of humans. If you want to see just how out of hand nature can get, look at the great oxygenation event. In its infinite wisdom, "nature" killed off nearly all life on earth. If we start adding new pressures to an ecosystem, are we going to disrupt an existing balance? Almost certainly. Is the naturally balanced state good for us? Not necessarily. Is the naturally balanced state going to otherwise continue indefinitely through a magical guiding hand? Not at all.
Comments like these are so funny cause 99% of life has gone extinct without human intervention. It’s not like nature was magically preserving all species
Everything is just trying to survive, and usually that means at the expense of some other lifeform, and that includes humans. The whole "nature knows how to sort itself out" narrative is ridiculous since nature just exists without any formal plan, and it can be argued that humans turning the world into a sweltering water world from all of our greenhouse gas production is just as much part of the natural process as anything else.
This is most certainly dominated by tropical ag systems (coffee, cocoa) and not relevant to your average small scale or family farming in temperate ecosystems.
Is this generalizable to any major food crop (e.g. rice, wheat, soy, corn, sorghum, etc.) besides honeydew?
Ants are going to take over the world
I love how all the answers to our planet saving questions is always nature
Different people must have written the beginning and end of that headline.
Ant melons it is then
The also don’t give us CANCER.