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Biodiversity-Driven Pest Management: Conserving Natural Enemies for Sustainable Agriculture

This special issue belongs to the section “Insect Pest and Vector Management“.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern agriculture faces escalating challenges in balancing crop productivity with environmental sustainability. Conventional pest management relying on pesticides has led to resistance development, non-target organism harm, and ecosystem degradation. Biodiversity-driven pest management (BDPM) offers a transformative approach by conserving natural enemies—predators, parasitoids, and pathogens—to regulate pest populations, enhance ecosystem resilience, and reduce agrochemical dependence. This paradigm aligns with global sustainability goals, emphasizing ecological balance and long-term agricultural viability.

This Special Issue focuses on the ecological mechanisms, practical applications, and socio-economic impacts of conserving natural enemies. Topics include the role of landscape diversity in enhancing natural enemy communities, tri-trophic interactions, and innovative strategies to integrate biological interventions into IPM frameworks. This issue, by bridging ecological theory and farm-level practices, seeks to advance scalable solutions for sustainable agriculture.

The theme resonates with Insects’ scope, which emphasizes insect ecology, pest management, and biodiversity conservation. We welcome original research, reviews, case studies, and perspective articles addressing agroecological dynamics, conservation biological control, and policy frameworks supporting BDPM.

Dr. Yanjun Zhang
Dr. Fang Ouyang
Dr. Felix Herzog
Dr. Meichun Duan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Insects is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • agroecology
  • biodiversity
  • integrated pest management
  • natural enemies
  • sustainable agriculture
  • biological control
  • conservation biology

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Insects - ISSN 2075-4450