Abstract
Abstract Cover crops are multifunctional tools that mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture, enhance resilience to weather extremes and suppress weeds and arthropod pests. Cover crops provide non‐crop food and habitat resources that attract natural enemies of pests, but their outcomes for pest management are less clear in regions where keystone mutualisms between red imported fire ants and aphids dominate. Here, we manipulate ant exclusion treatments and cover crop treatments (living mulches and terminated cover crops) that vary in food/habitat resources and examine responses of ants, aphids, other herbivores and predators in a cotton agroecosystem. Living mulches reduced both ants and aphids in the crop canopy by 97% and 93%, respectively, relative to bare soil treatments, and terminated cover crops reduced them as well by a lesser degree (~50%). Non‐aphid herbivores occurred in low densities system‐wide and increased in living mulches, whilst native predators had variable responses to cover crops and ant exclusion. Cover crops had no effect on prey removal in the crop canopy, but living mulches tripled rates of weed seed biocontrol, relative to bare soils. Cover crops elicited a shift in fire ant foraging from cotton foliage downward to the soil‐surface, preventing competitive exclusion by keystone ant/aphid mutualists that dominate crop monocultures. Cover crops altered the system‐wide impacts of fire ants: reducing ecosystem disservices (i.e. aphid tending) and enhancing ecosystem services (i.e. weed seed biocontrol). These results provide incentives for cover crop adoption as a regenerative practice in large‐scale commercial agriculture.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record; open copy licensed cc-by-nc. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 14
Claim · model-written summary
Living mulches reduced canopy ants by 97% relative to bare soil.
- Taxon
- cotton
Gossypium hirsutumt0 - Treatment
- Living mulchese0
- Interactor
- antsFormicidaee0pest
- Outcome
- antse0
- Direction
- reducede0
- Value
- 97%e0
- Comparator
- bare soil treatmentse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Living mulches reduced both ants and aphids in the crop canopy by 97% and 93%, respectively, relative to bare soil treatments”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Living mulches reduced canopy aphids by 93% relative to bare soil.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Living mulchese0
- Interactor
- aphidsAphidomorphae0pest
- Outcome
- aphids in the crop canopye0
- Direction
- reducede0
- Value
- 93%e0
- Comparator
- bare soil treatmentse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Living mulches reduced both ants and aphids in the crop canopy by 97% and 93%, respectively, relative to bare soil treatments”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Terminated cover crops reduced canopy ants by about 50%.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- terminated cover cropse0
- Interactor
- antsFormicidaee1pest
- Outcome
- antse1
- Direction
- reducede0
- Value
- ~50%e0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“terminated cover crops reduced them as well by a lesser degree (~50%)”
e1“ants and aphids in the crop canopy”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Terminated cover crops reduced canopy aphids by about 50%.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- terminated cover cropse0
- Interactor
- aphidsAphidomorphae1pest
- Outcome
- aphidse1
- Direction
- reducede0
- Value
- ~50%e0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“terminated cover crops reduced them as well by a lesser degree (~50%)”
e1“ants and aphids in the crop canopy”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Non-aphid herbivores occurred at low densities throughout the system.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Interactor
- Non‐aphid herbivorese0herbivore
- Outcome
- Non‐aphid herbivorese0
- Qualifier
- low densities system‐widee0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Non‐aphid herbivores occurred in low densities system‐wide”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Living mulches increased non-aphid herbivores.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- living mulchese0
- Interactor
- Non‐aphid herbivorese0herbivore
- Outcome
- Non‐aphid herbivorese0
- Direction
- increasede0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Non‐aphid herbivores occurred in low densities system‐wide and increased in living mulches”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Native predators responded variably to cover crops and ant exclusion.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- cover crops and ant exclusione0
- Interactor
- native predatorse0biocontrol_agent
- Outcome
- native predatorse0
Not reportedComparatorDirection
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“native predators had variable responses to cover crops and ant exclusion”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Cover crops had no effect on canopy prey removal.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Cover cropse0
- Outcome
- prey removal in the crop canopye0
- Direction
- no effecte0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cover crops had no effect on prey removal in the crop canopy”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Living mulches tripled weed seed biocontrol relative to bare soils.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- living mulchese0
- Interactor
- weede0weed
- Outcome
- rates of weed seed biocontrole0
- Direction
- triplede0
- Comparator
- bare soilse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“living mulches tripled rates of weed seed biocontrol, relative to bare soils”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Cover crops shifted fire ant foraging from cotton foliage to the soil surface.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Cover cropse0
- Interactor
- fire ante0pest
- Outcome
- fire ant foraginge0
- Direction
- downwarde0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cover crops elicited a shift in fire ant foraging from cotton foliage downward to the soil‐surface”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Cover crops prevented competitive exclusion by ant-aphid mutualists.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Interactor
- ante0pest
- Second interactor
- aphide0pest
- Outcome
- preventing competitive exclusione0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“preventing competitive exclusion by keystone ant/aphid mutualists that dominate crop monocultures”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Cover crops reduced aphid tending by fire ants.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Cover cropse0
- Interactor
- aphide0pest
- Second interactor
- fire antse0pest
- Outcome
- aphid tendinge0
- Direction
- reducinge0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Cover crops altered the system‐wide impacts of fire ants: reducing ecosystem disservices (i.e. aphid tending)”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
Cover crops enhanced weed seed biocontrol.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Cover cropse1
- Interactor
- weede0weed
- Outcome
- weed seed biocontrole0
- Direction
- enhancinge0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“enhancing ecosystem services (i.e. weed seed biocontrol)”
e1“Cover crops altered the system‐wide impacts of fire ants”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
Claim · model-written summary
The authors recommend cover crop adoption in commercial agriculture.
- Taxon
- cottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Outcome
- cover crop adoption as a regenerative practicee0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“These results provide incentives for cover crop adoption as a regenerative practice in large‐scale commercial agriculture”
t0“in a cotton agroecosystem”
The same questions in other papers
cover crop · weed · Gossypium hirsutum (cotton)Positive and negative results
7 papers in the same direction as this paper · 1 in the opposite direction
- positive
- negative
- positive
5 papers more in this group
See all 9 papers →cover crop · growth · Gossypium hirsutum (cotton)Positive and negative results
8 papers in the same direction as this paper · 4 in the opposite direction
- negative
- positive
- positive
9 papers more in this group
See all 13 papers →mulching · weed · Gossypium hirsutum (cotton)Results agree
9 papers in the same direction as this paper
- positive
- positive
- positive
6 papers more in this group
See all 10 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.