STUDIES ON THE CEBEAL EUOSYSTEM
109
This paper is a preliminary exploration of some of these issues in
relation to changes in contemporary arable farming. We have tried to
identify those problems in most need of attention, bearing in mind
that the general inability to forecast the likely outcome of change
inevitably weakens any environmental strategy.
Our ability to forecast future events will in part be determined by
the stability of the system from which the projection is to be made
and also by our knowledge of the processes in that system.
In 1939 G. Y. Bey Bienko wrote: “It is quite amazing that even wheat
which provides the staple diet of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, has not been studied in any country as a specific plant
and animal association, as a specific biocenosis” (see Bey Bienko, 1961).
In 1961 he added: “Little has been done since that time: we know a
number of details and have good knowledge of the pest fauna of
individual crops and of the biology of each individual pest but we know
little about how they live together, of the nature of their interaction
with other organisms, the features that distinguish agrobiocenoses from
primary cenoses, specific features in the formation of the fauna of an
agrobiocenosis as a whole as distinct from pests”. He could say the
same thing today.
This situation is even more to be regretted in view of the rapid,
fundamental and world-wide changes that have recently occurred in
this habitat; and more so because the cereal growing lands are so large
that any change there will affect the rest of the biosphere.
The Partridge Survival Project was set up in the late summer of
1968 and seeks a quantifiable explanation for the recent changes in
the distribution and productivity of the grey partridge (Perdix perdix
L.). A long-term decrease began over moat of the British Isles about
1914 and has continued to the present day, but the decline did not occur
until after 1953 on those estates which could continue their traditional
methods of partridge management (Potts, 1970a, 197Ib and unpublished). On the latter areas there was a marked reduction in the
average chick survival over the period 1962-1963 which has accelerated
the long-term decline and increased the variability of partridge density
throughout Britain. Similar changes have occurred, but more recently,
in France (Birkan, 1971; Gindre and Allion, 1971), Denmark (Strandgaard, 1968) and Germany (Madel, 1971); but not inFinland (Pulliainen,
1968) or Poland (Olech, 1971). Young partridge chicks mainly feed on
arthropods in cereal crops and the following studies have developed
from our desire to understand some of the spatial and temporal
variations in the arthropod fauna of these crops. We believe that our
data on this question warrant review even though the work is only in
its early stages.
109
This paper is a preliminary exploration of some of these issues in
relation to changes in contemporary arable farming. We have tried to
identify those problems in most need of attention, bearing in mind
that the general inability to forecast the likely outcome of change
inevitably weakens any environmental strategy.
Our ability to forecast future events will in part be determined by
the stability of the system from which the projection is to be made
and also by our knowledge of the processes in that system.
In 1939 G. Y. Bey Bienko wrote: “It is quite amazing that even wheat
which provides the staple diet of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, has not been studied in any country as a specific plant
and animal association, as a specific biocenosis” (see Bey Bienko, 1961).
In 1961 he added: “Little has been done since that time: we know a
number of details and have good knowledge of the pest fauna of
individual crops and of the biology of each individual pest but we know
little about how they live together, of the nature of their interaction
with other organisms, the features that distinguish agrobiocenoses from
primary cenoses, specific features in the formation of the fauna of an
agrobiocenosis as a whole as distinct from pests”. He could say the
same thing today.
This situation is even more to be regretted in view of the rapid,
fundamental and world-wide changes that have recently occurred in
this habitat; and more so because the cereal growing lands are so large
that any change there will affect the rest of the biosphere.
The Partridge Survival Project was set up in the late summer of
1968 and seeks a quantifiable explanation for the recent changes in
the distribution and productivity of the grey partridge (Perdix perdix
L.). A long-term decrease began over moat of the British Isles about
1914 and has continued to the present day, but the decline did not occur
until after 1953 on those estates which could continue their traditional
methods of partridge management (Potts, 1970a, 197Ib and unpublished). On the latter areas there was a marked reduction in the
average chick survival over the period 1962-1963 which has accelerated
the long-term decline and increased the variability of partridge density
throughout Britain. Similar changes have occurred, but more recently,
in France (Birkan, 1971; Gindre and Allion, 1971), Denmark (Strandgaard, 1968) and Germany (Madel, 1971); but not inFinland (Pulliainen,
1968) or Poland (Olech, 1971). Young partridge chicks mainly feed on
arthropods in cereal crops and the following studies have developed
from our desire to understand some of the spatial and temporal
variations in the arthropod fauna of these crops. We believe that our
data on this question warrant review even though the work is only in
its early stages.