Gregariousness can promote invasion success of pest insects while higher environmental heterogeneity decreases it

Gregarious prey items in a field artificial-prey experiment had the lowest predation risk, regardless of unpalatability or defensive colouration, indicating gregariousness supports invasion success.

• Why it matters: Climate change and environmental homogenization may increase forest pest expansion, but empirical evidence is limited on how antipredator traits interact with local predator communities and forest structure to shape outbreak risk.
• What they did: In a field predation experiment using edible dough prey, the study manipulated gregariousness, unpalatability, and defensive colouration, while measuring environmental variables and invertebrate predator community structure along prey transects.
• The result: Predation pressure was lower in more homogeneously structured forest areas or where deadwood continuum quality was weak, implying that higher forest heterogeneity can increase predation pressure to regulate pest population growth.

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