The current high level of deforestation in tropical countries requires that agriculture and its needs be included in conservation planning (Vandermeer and Perfecto 2007) and be orchestrated by teams composed of farmers, social organizations, conservation groups, and governmental agencies dedicated to forestry conservation ML323 (Scherr and McNeely 2008). The fact that rural communities strongly depend on certain ecosystem services that cannot be provided by radically transformed landscapes creates the opportunity for farmers, once they understand the

sources of these services, to create environments that better retain critical native biodiversity (Scherr and McNeely 2008). The vegetation management we propose is rooted in these concepts and has the potential to identify landscape components whose conservation can assist fruit production in tropical Mexico by providing pest reduction services likely to be lost in highly modified landscapes. Such out-of-field biological control services have been valued, for US farms at $4.5 billion annually (Losey and Vaughan 2006) but currently are not appreciated in many tropical areas. For example, in Mexico the National Campaign to Combat Fruit Flies spends US $521 to produce a million parasitoids for augmentative release (personal communication by J.M. Gutiérrez Ruelas, National Coordinator of Selleckchem ATR inhibitor Mexican Campaign for Fruit Flies).

Considering that in one mango season, the number of parasitoids needed to reduce fly infestation is around 33,000 parasitoids/ha Selleck 17DMAG (Montoya et al. 2000), the cost of augmentative biological control in 1 ha of mango is US $ 17.19 at current exchange rates. For un-capitalized growers in Latin America this cost is acceptable, but could be reduced if the use of parasitoid reservoir trees was implemented to produce thousands of parasitoids in situ. By increasing the value of forest and vegetation patches to farmers, the rate of loss of these

areas due to agricultural conversion might be slowed. This program provides a path by which small landholders and orchard owners in Veracruz who control a substantial part of the land of the region can be steered toward more environmentally friendly pest control and sustainable forest management, reducing damage to wildlife and protecting farmers Carnitine palmitoyltransferase II from health risks associated with pesticide-intensive fruit production. Future research needs Our model identifies the tree species whose conservation is necessary and the timing of their fruiting, but additional work is needed to quantify the per tree output of flies and parasitoids from each tree type and the timing of their emergence. How many trees and of what types will be required, and how close they must be to orchards, are examples of questions for which answers must be determined experimentally to foster connectivity between parasitoid reservoirs and orchards.