Our work group report details the importance of pest allergen exposure in inner-city asthma. We will focus specifically on mouse and cockroach exposure. We will discuss how exposure to these pests is common in the inner city and what conditions exist in urban areas that might lead to increased exposure. We will discuss how exposure is associated with allergen sensitization and asthma morbidity....

BACKGROUND Cockroaches and mice, which are common in urban homes, are sources of allergens capable of triggering asthma symptoms. Traditional pest control involves the use of scheduled applications of pesticides by professionals as well as pesticide use by residents. In contrast, integrated pest management (IPM) involves sanitation, building maintenance, and limited use of least toxic pesticide...

ABSTRACT The forest landscape of the United States has changed over time, as has public concern for the trees, water, and wildlife. Early in the history of the United States, forests were viewed as an encumbrance and an inexhaustible resource, used to meet the needs of a growing nation. Around 1900, it became clear that old approaches were not sustainable and forest pathology saw its beginning....

Shifts to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in agriculture are assisted by the identification of chemical applications that provide effective control of pests relative to broad-spectrum pesticides but have fewer negative effects on natural enemy (beneficial) groups that assist in pest control. Here, we outline a framework for identifying such applications and apply this framework to field trials...

The long-term fitness of individuals is examined in complex and temporally dynamic ecosystems. We call this multigeneration fitness measure "future fitness". Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a polyphagous insect that feeds on many wild and cultivated hosts. While four generations of H. zea occur during the cropping season in the U.S. Mid Southern agroecosysem, the latter two...

A change in climate is known to affect seasonal timing (phenology) of the life stages of poikilothermic organisms whose development depends on temperature. Less understood is the potential for even greater disruption to the life cycle when a phenology shift exposes photoperiod-sensitive life stages to new day lengths. We present a conceptual framework and model to investigate the ways that phot...

We conducted Weld experiments to test the hypothesis that regulation of herbivorous pests in urban landscapes can be enhanced with forbs that provide Xoral resources for adult natural enemies. The herbivore was bagworm, Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis (Haworth) (Lepidoptera: Psychidae), which is attacked by a guild of hymenopterous parasitoids. We established host shrubs in common garden planting...

Although climate change can cause extreme alterations to ecosystems, only limited research has investigated how altered physical conditions (e.g., warming, extreme temperature events, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and altered precipitation) influence species interactions. In particular, the interplay between host and parasites in such a changing world is in need of study. Our objective i...

We summarize the economic importance, biology, and management of soft scales, focusing on pests of agricultural, horticultural, and silvicultural crops in outdoor production systems and urban landscapes. We also provide summaries on voltinism, crawler emergence timing, and predictive models for crawler emergence to assist in developing soft scale management programs. Phloem-feeding soft scale p...