BACKGROUND: Non-crop habitats are integral components of winter wheat agroecosystems, providing food resources and refuges that may support early-spring recovery of predatory natural enemies and contribute to early-season biological control potential. RESULTS: During 2024-2025, we used sticky traps to monitor four typical non-crop habitats (woodland, grassland, village, and uncultivated land) adjacent to wheat fields, quantifying early-season abundance dynamics of predatory natural enemies across habitat types and survey dates. Our results show that early-season abundance dynamics varied significantly among habitat types. Eupeodes corollae was most abundant in woodland, averaging 10.36-fold higher than in village. Chrysoperla sinica was most abundant in grassland, averaging 7.72-fold higher than in uncultivated land. Village provided important early-season refuges for coccinellids: Propylaea japonica abundance was on average 4.14-fold higher than in uncultivated land, and Harmonia axyridis abundance was on average 5.32-fold higher. CONCLUSION: Conserving and properly managing village-edge vegetation, grasslands, and woodland edges surrounding farmland may promote the early-spring recovery of predatory natural enemies in wheat agroecosystems. These findings suggest potential for strengthened early-season aphid management through enhanced availability of predatory natural enemies and reduced reliance on chemical pesticides, although aphid populations were not monitored and possible spillover into wheat fields was inferred indirectly from spatial and temporal abundance patterns. © 2026 Society of Chemical Industry.
Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.