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22 August 2024 Farmland Herpetofauna: What Do They Do for Us?
Deyatima Ghosh, Vikram Aditya, Neelavar Ananthram Aravind
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Abstract

What do herpetofauna do for us? This question is hardly ever asked because a thorough evaluation of their role in ecosystems has not yet been completed. The adverse environmental impacts of increasing agricultural intensification have put the spotlight on the role that resident predator populations can play in improving crop health through biological pest control. Given their diverse roles as natural predators in farmland habitats, reptiles and amphibians have the potential to be effective bioregulators. However, targeted pest regulation programs that use herpetofauna as agents of biocontrol are still absent. To include herpetofauna in bioregulation, we need to reevaluate our understanding and the current state of knowledge of the ecosystem services and disservices that herpetofauna provide. We exhaustively reviewed literature on the role of herpetofauna in pest regulation over 5 decades using multiple search engines and combinations of keywords. We found that only 27 studies evaluated biological pest regulation using 60 species of herpetofauna on 20 species of crop pests. In this review, we provide a comprehensive synthesis of the relevant data and possibilities of utilizing farmland herpetofauna as pest regulators in agroecological systems while also addressing key limitations. Finally, we suggest potential avenues for future research that can improve inclusion of amphibians and reptiles in crop pest mitigation and eventually conserve both herpetofauna and their ecosystem services.

Deyatima Ghosh, Vikram Aditya, and Neelavar Ananthram Aravind "Farmland Herpetofauna: What Do They Do for Us?," Journal of Herpetology 58(2), 83-97, (22 August 2024). https://doi.org/10.1670/23-026
Accepted: 7 April 2024; Published: 22 August 2024
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