Pesticide risk assessments are usually based on short-term acute toxicity tests, while longer-term population dynamic related traits, critical to the success of biological control and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs, are often overlooked. This is increasingly important with respect to new biopesticides that frequently cause no short-term acute effects, but that can induce multiple phy...

The erythrina gall wasp (EGW), believed native to Africa, is a recently described species and now serious invasive pest of Erythrina (coral trees) in tropical and subtropical locales. Erythrina are favored ornamental and landscape trees, as well as native members of threatened ecosystems. The EGW is a tiny, highly mobile, highly invasive wasp that deforms (galls) host trees causing severe defol...

The effects of various insecticides on the fluidity of mitochondrial membranes and cross-resistance were investigated in the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae) using strains that were both resistant and susceptible to avermectin. The resistant strain of P. xylostella, AV-R, developed 1078-fold resistance to avermetins with a high level of cross-resistance to t...

Conservation management of wild fish may include fish health management in sympatric populations of domesticated fish in aquaculture. We developed a mathematical model for the population dynamics of parasitic sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) on domesticated populations of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in the Broughton Archipelago region of British Columbia. The model was fit to a seven-year d...

Sea lice are a naturally occurring ectoparasite of wild salmon (Nagasawa 2001; Beamish, Neville, Sweeting & Ambers 2005). There is also clear evidence that these parasites are seldom a production or fish health concern on farms in British Columbia (Saksida, Constantine, Karreman & Donald 2007), in direct contrast to most other salmon-producing regions (Heuch, Revie & Gettinby 2003; O Donohoe, K...

Biological control is occasionally supplemented with insecticides treatments, which may have a significant impact on natural enemies. Typically, selective compounds are chosen to overcome lack of compatibility, but an alternative approach the use biocontrol agents resistant pesticides. Orius laevigatus (Fieber) (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) main predator used thrips and other small pests in greenho...