ArticlePloS one2025
The impact of family farming on Afrotropical flower fly communities (Diptera, Syrphidae): A case study in Tanzania.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To provide empirical evidence about the impact of family farming on Afrotropical flower fly communities (Diptera, Syrphidae), we established a large experimental setup in the Morogoro area (Eastern Central Tanzania) and quantified insect abundance and diversity in contrasting agricultural landscapes. Over the two years of this study, we collected 12,969 flower flies from 55 species and 3 subfamilies: Eristalinae (29 species), Microdontinae (2 species), and Syrphinae (24 species). The ten most abundant species contributed to 84.95% of specimens. Overall, we did not observe major changes in species richness or diversity between agroecological and conventional farming. In contrast, higher abundances of the two dominant species, Toxomerus floralis (Fabricius, 1798) and Paragus borbonicus Macquart, 1842 (69.49% of all specimens collected) were observed in agroecological treatments. This effect was more pronounced where the landscape features were more favourable to each of these species (i.e., in the plateau for T. floralis and in the mountains for P. borbonicus). Landscape provided a comparably much stronger effect than farming practices, and the percentage of variation explained by landscape, as a standalone factor, was approximately five times higher than for farming practices. Spatial heterogeneity and seasonality also provided a large and significant proportion of random variability. Our results stress how verifying a generally accepted paradigm of sustainable agriculture, "agroecology promotes abundance and diversity of beneficial insects", might require careful consideration, as, under field conditions, the impact of sustainable farming practices on insect communities might be embedded within complex, multi-layered ecological interactions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.