Decreased reliance on pesticides can be achieved through a clever use of eco-evolutionary knowledge via intercropping economically valuable crops with companion plants that can hamper pest outbreaks. We created a greenhouse multi-layered microcosm system to test two potato peach aphid clones, performing alone or in competition, on mixes of genetically variable cultivars of cabbage, with and without onion. The onion acted as a nuisance/disturbance for the pest, which was generally for the benefit of the cabbage albeit both plants sharing space and nutrients. The onion effect was context-specific and differed by aphid genotype. Onion variable nuisance negatively affected the numbers of one aphid genotype (green) across all contexts, while the other genotype (pink) numbers were decreased in two contexts only. However, the green performed better than the pink on all cases of cabbage di-mixes despite its numbers being capped when the onion was present. Further, there was also a general aphid propensity to wander off the plant along with a differential production of winged morphs to escape the onion-affected environments. Moreover, through a comparative increase in dry mass, which was subject to onion and aphid effects, a diversity effect was found where the cabbages of fully genetically variable microcosms sustained similar final dry mass compared with non-infested microcosms. Our findings provide fresh insights into the use of multi-layered contextual designs that not only allow disentangling the relative effects of genetic variation and modes of interaction, but also help integrate their benefits into pest management in view of companion planting.

中文翻译：

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干扰和竞争驱动具有种内遗传变异的卷心菜-蚜虫-洋葱系统的多样性效应

可以通过巧妙地利用生态进化知识来减少对杀虫剂的依赖，通过将具有经济价值的作物与可以阻止害虫爆发的伴生植物间作来实现。我们创建了一个温室多层缩影系统，以测试两个马铃薯桃蚜克隆，单独或竞争，在有和没有洋葱的卷心菜的遗传可变品种的混合物上进行。洋葱对害虫造成滋扰/干扰，这通常是为了卷心菜的利益，尽管两种植物共享空间和营养。洋葱效应是特定于环境的，并且因蚜虫基因型而异。洋葱变量滋扰对所有情况下一种蚜虫基因型（绿色）的数量产生负面影响，而其他基因型（粉红色）数量仅在两种情况下减少。然而，在所有的卷心菜 di-mixes 中，绿色的表现都比粉红色好，尽管它的数量在洋葱存在时被限制了。此外，还有一种普遍的蚜虫倾向于在植物外游荡，同时产生不同的有翅变体以逃避受洋葱影响的环境。此外，通过受洋葱和蚜虫影响的干质量的相对增加，发现了多样性效应，即完全遗传可变的微观世界的卷心菜与未受侵染的微观世界相比具有相似的最终干质量。我们的研究结果为使用多层上下文设计提供了新的见解，这些设计不仅可以解开遗传变异和相互作用模式的相对影响，而且还有助于将它们的好处整合到伴随种植的害虫管理中。