Natural predation is an important component of integrated pest management that is often overlooked because it is difficult to quantify and perceived to be unreliable. To begin incorporating natural predation into sweet corn, Zea mays L., pest management, a predator survey was conducted and then three sampling methods were compared for their ability to accurately monitor the most abundant predat...

Reconstructing prairie vegetation in row crop-dominated agricultural landscapes may contribute to several ecosystem services, including the biological control of insect pests, such as the soybean aphid Aphis glycines Matsumura. The influence of the amount and configuration of reconstructed prairie vegetation on the delivery of ecosystem services was investigated in several small catchments at N...

Our knowledge of ecological interactions that bolster ecosystem function and productivity has broad applications to the management of agricultural systems. Studies suggest that the presence of generalist predators in agricultural landscapes leads to a decrease in the abundance of herbivorous pests, but our understanding of how these interactions vary across taxa and along gradients of managemen...

Biodiversity loss will likely have surprising and dramatic consequences for human wellbeing. Identifying species that benefit society represents a critical first step towards predicting the consequences of biodiversity loss. Though natural predators prevent billions of dollars in agricultural pest damage annually, characterizing which predators consume pests has proven challenging. Emerging mol...

To identify the factors contributing to the farmers’ attitude towards Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices in rice cultivation, 158 family heads of the Farmers Field Schools (FFSs) at Godagari Upzila under Rajshahi District were chosen at random to constitute the subjects of the study. Data were collected from 5 September, 2006 to 28 January, 2007. Twenty four selected characteristics of ...

Blister beetles (Meloidae) are cosmopolitan in distribution except from New Zealand, Antarctica and most Polynesian islands. They act as minor pests for some crops and as major pests for others under certain conditions in several parts of the world. The present work reviews the most important agronomic impacts of various beetle species in different African, Asian, European and American countrie...

Research at the Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research site (KBS LTER) is focused on understanding the ecological interactions underlying the productivity of row-crop ecosystems. Within these systems, insect pests and weeds represent two major groups of organisms that farmers must consistently and effectively manage. Since its inception in 1989, entomologists associated with K...

Pesticides including insecticides and miticides are primarily used to regulate arthropod (insect and mite) pest populations in agricultural and horticultural crop production systems. However, continual reliance on pesticides may eventually result in a number of potential ecological problems including resistance, secondary pest outbreaks, and/or target pest resurgence [1,2]. Therefore, implement...

When plants are damaged, they produce semiochemicals which can act as repellents for herbivorous pests and as attractants for organisms antagonistic to these pests, e.g., predators and parasitic wasps. Plants can also produce signals that warn other plants of impending attack. From this range of phenomena, it is possible to identify new ways to control pests. Although, in the past, we have need...

Conservation biological control (CBC) is an environmentally sound potential alternative to the use of chemical insecticides. It involves modifications of the environment to promote natural enemy activity on pests. Despite many CBC studies increasing abundance of natural enemies, there are far fewer demonstrations of reduced pest density and very little work has been conducted in olive crops. In...