The SFE thematic group ‘Agricultural ecology’ proposes a context and a focus for this topic

(contact: sabrina.gaba@dijon.inra.fr)

Agroecosystems are communities of plants, animals and microorganisms interacting with their physical and chemical environments that have been built by humans to produce food, fiber, fuel and other products for human consumption and processing. Agroecology, which is defined, from a scientific point of view, as the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agroecosystems, provides a framework to assess the complexity of agroecosystems. Agroecology goes beyond the use of alternative practices to develop agroecosystems, often inspired by natural ecosystems, with a minimal dependence on agrochemical and energy inputs. This should lead to complex agricultural systems in which biodiversity, ecological interactions and synergies between ecological components allow the systems to sustain their own soil fertility, productivity and crop protection.

Enhancing diversity of agroecosystems in time and space is one of the major research issues in agroecology. Diversity can occur at different levels of organization (from genes to community and landscape) that are all relevant to manage agroecosystems (from multiple cropping systems to complex landscapes). Analyzing and predicting the effect of increasing diversity relies on several ecological concepts and theories (intraspecific variability, functional traits, niche theory, neutral theory, biotic interactions, food web, land sparing vs. sharing …) that must be exploited to develop agroecological practices.

We thus encourage proposals examining the role of genetic, species, functional and landscape diversity promoting key ecological processes for the design and management of sustainable agroecosystems. Proposals that explore interdisciplinary connections between ecology and other disciplines (e.g. link with social and economic sciences or agricultural sciences) are also encouraged.