The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande) attacks a large number of crop plants. The current insecticides have caused resistance in insects and have caused outbreaks of thrips. In many instances, alternative methods of insect management and natural products, offer adequate pest control and pose fewer hazards. Several species of minute pirate bugs of the genus Orius play a...

Understanding why some exotic species become invasive is essential to controlling their populations. This review discusses the possibility that two mechanisms of invasion, release from natural enemies and increased resource availability, may interact. When plants invade new continents, they leave many herbivores and pathogens behind. Species most regulated by enemies in their native range have ...

In a recent article in TREE [1], Pearson and Callaway consider how indirect effects can lead to even host-specific biological control agents impacting on nontarget species. Although the authors raise some interesting points, we feel that the indirect effects that they explore might not be as generally applicable to biological control as they contend. The first indirect effect considered is ‘eco...

In conservation biological control, we seek to make agricultural systems more hospitable to natural enemies, in an attempt to increase enemy abundance and diversity. However, it is unclear whether the effectiveness of biological control actually increases with growing natural enemy diversity, in communities including many species of generalist predators. Studies have shown that suppression of h...

We investigated whether development of resistance to a Bt crop in the presence of a natural enemy would be slower than without the natural enemy and whether biological control, in conjunction with a Bt crop, could effectively suppress the pest population. Additionally, we investigated whether insecticide-sprayed refuges of non-Bt crops would delay or accelerate resistance to the Bt crop. We use...