Modern agricultural landscapes are shaped by disturbance regimes that differ markedly from those occurring prior to agricultural land use. These disturbance regimes have influenced agricultural landscape structure and in turn have strong impacts on the diversity, abundance and effectiveness of insect natural enemies that occur within crop habitats. Effective conservation of natural enemies in agricultural landscapes requires an appreciation of the mechanisms by which landscape structure influences natural enemy biology and an understanding of how to modify disturbance regimes to favor natural enemies. The goal of habitat management as a form of conservation biological control is to create a suitable ecological infrastructure within the agricultural landscape to provide resources for natural enemies such as food, alternative prey or hosts, and shelter from adverse conditions. These resources must be integrated into the landscape in a way that is spatially and temporally favorable to natural enemies and practical for producers to implement.
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