Lauren Hunt

University of Vermont | UVM · College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Agroforestry has a high potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation as a nature-based climate solution and is increasingly included as a climate strategy in international agreements and national plans. Yet, how to equitably increase and sustain agroforestry on the scale needed to meet these targets remains unclear. Examining...

Plants with floral resources are advocated to enhance natural enemy density and efficacy in conservation biological control systems. Field experiments were conducted to examine the ability of partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) planted along two borders of organic field corn (Zea mays) plots to attract natural enemies and enhance biological co...

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance...

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance...

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and s...

Significance Decades of research have fostered the now-prevalent assumption that noncrop habitat facilitates better pest suppression by providing shelter and food resources to the predators and parasitoids of crop pests. Based on our analysis of the largest pest-control database of its kind, noncrop habitat surrounding farm fields does affect multi...

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on p...

Riparian buffers of native warm season (WSG) or non-native cool season (CSG) species are commonly planted along margins of crop fields as part of the USDA Conservation Reserve Program. The soil, water and wildlife enhancement values of these buffers are well researched and documented. However, their conservation value for biological control is larg...

Ecologists and farmers often have contrasting perceptions about the value of natural habitat in agricultural production landscapes, which so far has been little acknowledged in ecology and conservation. Ecologists and conservationists often appreciate the contribution of natural habitat to biodiversity and potential ecosystem services such as biolo...

Increasing plant diversity in conventionally monoculture agrosystems has been promoted as a method to enhance beneficial arthropod density and efficacy, suppress herbivory and provide a range of ecosystem services. I investigated the pest suppressive potential and economic impact of plant diversification in organic field corn. The experiment consis...