Biological Control Strategies in Turfgrass Ecosystems
Summary
Turfgrass systems, from urban lawns to sports fields and golf courses, are vulnerable to a diverse array of insect pests, including white grubs, chinch bugs and webworms. Overreliance on synthetic pesticides has led to environmental contamination, resistance development and loss of beneficial organisms. Biological control strategies offer a sustainable alternative by harnessing living organisms or ecological processes to suppress pest populations. Approaches include conservation biological control, which enhances habitat conditions for native predators and parasitoids; classical biocontrol, entailing deliberate introduction of specialised natural enemies; augmentation, involving periodic release of mass‐reared agents; and habitat manipulation, such as intercropping or cultivar diversification, to disrupt pest life cycles. Turfgrass cultivar blends and intercrops with legumes or wildflowers can provide both bottom‐up resistance—through reduced host suitability—and top‐down regulation by attracting predatory arthropods. These strategies align with integrated pest management principles, reducing chemical inputs while maintaining turf quality and ecosystem services such as pollination, soil health and water retention. Emerging work emphasises multi‐trophic interactions, landscape connectivity and genetic diversity to build resilient turfgrass landscapes on a global scale.
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Biological Control Strategies in Turfgrass Ecosystems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in biological control strategies in turfgrass ecosystems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Associational resistance: Reduction in pest damage resulting from increased diversity of host or non-host plants within a community.
Bottom-up regulation: Control of pest populations through host-plant traits that limit herbivore survival and reproduction.
Functional guild: Group of organisms that exploit the same type of resources or perform similar ecological roles.
Multi-trophic interactions: Ecological relationships spanning three or more levels of a food web, such as plants, herbivores and predators.
Top-down regulation: Suppression of pest populations by natural enemies such as predators, parasitoids or pathogens.
References
- The Impact of Wildflower Habitat on Insect Functional Group Abundance in Turfgrass Systems. Insects (2024).
- Turfgrass Cultivar Diversity Provides Associational Resistance in the Absence of Pest Resistant Cultivars. Environmental Entomology (2019).
- Investigating multi‐trophic effects of St. Augustinegrass cultivar blends in the Southeastern United States. Crop Science (2024).
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