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Citation

King, Peter and Robinson, Theresa and Howard, Charlotte and Breeze, Tom and Dallimer, Martin (2025) Economic valuation of pest regulation benefits provided by insects in the UK: a supporting dataset. University of Leeds. [Dataset] https://doi.org/10.5518/1674

Dataset description

The role of insects as regulators of crop pests has gone underexamined in comparison to their, often dual, role as crop pollinators. While pollination services have been widely studied, the economic value of pest regulation provided by natural enemy species remains underexplored. The suppression of crop pests by natural enemies may provide substantial value to agriculture in reduced crop losses. Here, we estimate the economic value of pest regulation services provided by insects in the UK for wheat (Triticum spp.), barley (Hordeum vulgare), and oilseed rape (Brassica napus) crops. We used an economic production function to estimate the average annual value of pest regulation provided by insects in the UK, and then simulated economic benefits across a range of reductions (1% - 99%) in the presence of natural enemies. A 10% reduction from a full complement of natural enemies had an estimated value per hectare between £108.98 - £171.13 for barley, £36.93 - £73.97 for oilseed rape, and £0.74 - £9.60 for wheat. However, there are areas of uncertainty around the efficacy of natural enemies, crop yield response, economic thresholds, and field management. Resolving these sources of uncertainty and quantifying the economic value of pest regulation could inform sustainable pest management strategies and wider insect conservation practice.

Keywords:	Economic valuation, production functions, pest regulation, pesticide, natural enemies, insects, insecticides.
Divisions:	Faculty of Environment > School of Earth and Environment
License:	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Date deposited:	15 Sep 2025 16:59
URI:	https://archive.researchdata.leeds.ac.uk/id/eprint/1457
Additional details Additional details Creators or authors: Creators ORCID Other ID Email Primary affiliation Primary affiliation ID Primary affiliation ID type Secondary affiliation Secondary affiliation ID Secondary affiliation ID type King, Peter https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8550-466X University of Leeds https://ror.org/024mrxd33 ror Robinson, Theresa https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5404-7272 Joint Nature Conservation Committee https://ror.org/05tzsrw37 ror Howard, Charlotte https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6049-9427 University of Reading https://ror.org/05v62cm79 ror Breeze, Tom https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8929-8354 University of Reading https://ror.org/05v62cm79 ror Dallimer, Martin https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8120-3309 Imperial College London https://ror.org/041kmwe10 ror Type of data: Dataset Research funders: Natural Environment Research Council Grant numbers: NE/V006916/1 Publication date: 2025 Resource language: English Metadata language: English Research project title: DRUID Publisher: University of Leeds Last Modified: 16 Sep 2025 10:50

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