Biological pest management is now widely recognized as a crucial strategy for mitigating losses in crop and animal production without compromising environmental safety and human health. However, most research relating to natural pest control has predominantly focused on predatory or parasitoid arthropods and their function in top-down suppression of herbivorous arthropod pests in agricultural crops. Little attention has been paid to the role of vertebrate predators. Yet many taxa of vertebrate consumers are significantly instrumental in contributing to regulation of pest populations across a wide array of habitats including croplands, forests, woodlands, parks, hedges, urban areas, water-bodies and even such microhabitats as body surfaces of wild and domesticated animals. Although importance of certain vertebrate consumers such as birds and bats in regulating cropland arthropod pests has gained increasing research prominence in recent years, most other vertebrate taxa remain undocumented for their contribution to this ecological function.

Given the projected future proliferation, spread and diversity of pests across habitats and geographical ranges due to climate change, their economic and ecological impacts is forecast to escalate. Mitigating this threat requires more intensive and wider-scoped integrated pest management research that incorporates the widest array of bio-control agent-taxa, including vertebrate predators, across multiple habitats. For instance, insectivorous birds consume many farmland, forestry and grassland arthropod pests; many invertebrate disease vectors are consumed by reptiles, birds, mammals or fish; and many rodents constitute diets of many larger vertebrate predators. Furthermore, such vertebrate-prey interactions often occur across many habitat types, and across diverse temporal scales, depending on their movement patterns, life histories strategies or land management intensity. Owing to challenges in integrating spatial and temporal dimensions in estimating vertebrate consumers’ pest consumption due to their wider dispersal, their role in top-down pest-suppression is often undervalued. Therefore results from studies and research techniques examining vertebrate-pest predatory interactions at inter-disciplinary, cross habitat or cross-taxa scales, have potential as technical foundations to guide effective production systems that reduce pest impacts, and inform policy underpinnings for land management measures that ultimately promote minimal pest-related economic losses while conserving, vertebrate predators within productively sustainable and resilient landscapes.

This Topical theme targets submissions of high quality research papers from:
• Studies and techniques that highlight vertebrate predators’ roles in pest or disease-vector suppression within or outside the integrated pest management framework;
• They may be from any habitat/microhabitat whether cropland, grassland, or woodlands; aquatic/riparian environment or siviculture/forestry; urban or recreational areas;
• Vertebrate predators may be birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians or fish; whether obligate or omnivorous, provided that in the latter case, the highlight focuses on pest-suppression components of its trophic interactions;
• Studies could be from direct field observations or controlled experiments including application of indirect techniques such as molecular markers, DNA sequencing, stable isotope analyses, or geospatial tools like remote sensing.
• Spatial scope may be local, landscape or regional.
• Submissions, which should be new manuscripts unpublished and not currently under review elsewhere, may be original research papers, reviews or opinions.

Submissions should adhere to Author Guidelines for Frontiers in Conservation Science (https://www.frontiersin.org/guidelines/author-guidelines).

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Frontiers in Conservation Science

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