Thread by @acaptainplanet

#WBTC2 #Land1 Do you 🤤 when you think about 🍫? Yes! But did you know that 70% of 🍫 comes from Africa and that 🪲 #pests can cause losses of > 400,000€ million annually? 😱 #Nature can be the solution to this 👉 so far we found the main 🍫 pest in 18 🦇 & 🐦 species! 😋
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#WBTC2 #Land1 But does this #pest consumption have a significant effect on pest populations? To find out we decided to do an exclusion experiment to quantify 🦇&🐦 effect on #cacao production 🤔 For 12 months we counted everything in 16 full tree exclosures and 16 controls 🧐
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#WBTC2 #Land1 We found out that 🦇&🐦 are suppressing almost all #arthropods groups! They do an #ecosystemservice by reducing
phytophagous 🪳(like Hemiptera and Mealybug pests), but on the other hand they do a disservice by reducing predatory 🕷️ and potencial pollinators 🪰🌼
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#WBTC2 #Land1 The question now is: do the services they do in 🍫 #plantations outweigh the disservices? Hell yeah! 💪 Although the number of 🌼 did not change between exclosures & controls, all pod sizes were more abundant in controls. In total we had around 30% more pods!
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#WBTC2 #Land1 Thanks to this we know that 🦇&🐦 are giving us more 🍫 Now we need to convert our savings in pods aka cacao fruits to dry cacao weight. Only that way we'll know how much 💶 do they save #farmers every year! Stay tuned to find out more: bit.ly/2QPDLkY
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