scholarly journals The Threat of Pests and Pathogens and the Potential for Biological Control in Forest Ecosystems

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1579
Author(s):  
Amel Balla ◽  
Allaoua Silini ◽  
Hafsa Cherif-Silini ◽  
Ali Chenari Bouket ◽  
Warren Keith Moser ◽  
...  

Forests are an essential component of the natural environment, as they support biodiversity, sequester carbon, and play a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles—in addition to producing organic matter that is necessary for the function of terrestrial organisms. Forests today are subject to threats ranging from natural occurrences, such as lightning-ignited fires, storms, and some forms of pollution, to those caused by human beings, such as land-use conversion (deforestation or intensive agriculture). In recent years, threats from pests and pathogens, particularly non-native species, have intensified in forests. The damage, decline, and mortality caused by insects, fungi, pathogens, and combinations of pests can lead to sizable ecological, economic, and social losses. To combat forest pests and pathogens, biocontrol may be an effective alternative to chemical pesticides and fertilizers. This review of forest pests and potential adversaries in the natural world highlights microbial inoculants, as well as research efforts to further develop biological control agents against forest pests and pathogens. Recent studies have shown promising results for the application of microbial inoculants as preventive measures. Other studies suggest that these species have potential as fertilizers.

2016 ◽  
Vol 148 (S1) ◽  
pp. S239-S269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris J.K. MacQuarrie ◽  
D.B. Lyons ◽  
M. Lukas Seehausen ◽  
Sandy M. Smith

AbstractBiological control has been an important tactic in the management of Canadian forests for over a century, but one that has had varied success. Here, we review the history of biological control programmes using vertebrate and invertebrate parasitoids and predators against insects in Canadian forests. Since roughly 1882, 41 insect species have been the target of biological control, with approximately equal numbers of both native and non-native species targeted. A total of 161 species of biological control agents have been released in Canadian forests, spanning most major orders of insects, as well as mites and mammals. Biological control has resulted in the successful suppression of nine pest species, and aided in the control of an additional six species. In this review, we outline the chronological history of major projects across Canadian forests, focussing on those that have had significant influence for the development of biological control. The historical data clearly illustrate a rise and fall in the use of biological control as a tactic for managing forest pests, from its dominance in the 1940s and 1950s to its current low level. The strategic implementation of these biological control programmes, their degree of success, and the challenges faced are discussed, along with the discipline’s shifting relationship to basic science and the environmental viewpoints surrounding its use.


Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.


2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 1798-1806 ◽  
Author(s):  
George H. Boettner ◽  
Joseph S. Elkinton ◽  
Cynthia J. Boettner

Author(s):  
Fazila Yousuf ◽  
Peter A. Follett ◽  
Conrad P. D. T. Gillett ◽  
David Honsberger ◽  
Lourdes Chamorro ◽  
...  

AbstractPhymastichus coffea LaSalle (Hymenoptera:Eulophidae) is an adult endoparasitoid of the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari) (Coleoptera:Curculionidae:Scolytinae), which has been introduced in many coffee producing countries as a biological control agent. To determine the effectiveness of P. coffea against H. hampei and environmental safety for release in Hawaii, we investigated the host selection and parasitism response of adult females to 43 different species of Coleoptera, including 23 Scolytinae (six Hypothenemus species and 17 others), and four additional Curculionidae. Non-target testing included Hawaiian endemic, exotic and beneficial coleopteran species. Using a no-choice laboratory bioassay, we demonstrated that P. coffea was only able to parasitize the target host H. hampei and four other adventive species of Hypothenemus: H. obscurus, H. seriatus, H. birmanus and H. crudiae. Hypothenemus hampei had the highest parasitism rate and shortest parasitoid development time of the five parasitized Hypothenemus spp. Parasitism and parasitoid emergence decreased with decreasing phylogenetic relatedness of the Hypothenemus spp. to H. hampei, and the most distantly related species, H. eruditus, was not parasitized. These results suggest that the risk of harmful non-target impacts is low because there are no native species of Hypothenemus in Hawaii, and P. coffea could be safely introduced for classical biological control of H. hampei in Hawaii.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 711
Author(s):  
Long Zhang ◽  
Michel Lecoq

Effective locust and grasshopper control is crucial as locust invasions have seriously threatened crops and food security since ancient times. However, the preponderance of chemical insecticides, effective and widely used today, is increasingly criticized as a result of their adverse effects on human health and the environment. Alternative biological control methods are being actively sought to replace chemical pesticides. Nosema locustae (Synonyms: Paranosema locustae, Antonospora locustae), a protozoan pathogen of locusts and grasshoppers, was developed as a biological control agent as early as the 1980s. Subsequently, numerous studies have focused on its pathogenicity, host spectrum, mass production, epizootiology, applications, genomics, and molecular biology. Aspects of recent advances in N. locustae show that this entomopathogen plays a special role in locust and grasshopper management because it is safer, has a broad host spectrum of 144 orthopteran species, vertical transmission to offspring through eggs, long persistence in locust and grasshopper populations for more than 10 years, and is well adapted to various types of ecosystems in tropical and temperate regions. However, some limitations still need to be overcome for more efficient locust and grasshopper management in the future.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sardul Singh Sandhu ◽  
Anil K. Sharma ◽  
Vikas Beniwal ◽  
Gunjan Goel ◽  
Priya Batra ◽  
...  

The growing demand for reducing chemical inputs in agriculture and increased resistance to insecticides have provided great impetus to the development of alternative forms of insect-pest control. Myco-biocontrol offers an attractive alternative to the use of chemical pesticides. Myco-biocontrol agents are naturally occurring organisms which are perceived as less damaging to the environment. Their mode of action appears little complex which makes it highly unlikely that resistance could be developed to a biopesticide. Past research has shown some promise of the use of fungi as a selective pesticide. The current paper updates us about the recent progress in the field of myco-biocontrol of insect pests and their possible mechanism of action to further enhance our understanding about the biological control of insect pests.


2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Turner ◽  
Bill Freedman

The relationships of people with the natural world are expressed in diverse ways, including painting, photographs, sculpture, song, video, and literature. In this document, we review historical and contemporary portrayals of nature as a theme in Canadian literature. Our assessment is intended to explore how Canadians have articulated their feelings about nature through literary expression, and to thereby gain insight into their empathy for natural ecosystems and native species, and their concern about damage caused to those values. We begin with a broad overview of nature as a theme in cultural expression, including overarching ones in Canadian literature, and discuss the influential literary views of Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, and their critics. We then examine the expression of nature within seven focal areas: early aboriginal expression, narratives of explorers, stories of settlers, the genre of animal stories, 20th-century poetry, recent aboriginal literature, and environmental ideas in contemporary prose. We identify six dominant themes of the expression of nature in Canadian literature: (1) humans as a part of nature; (2) a bounty of natural resources; (3) fear of an adversarial wilderness; (4) improvement of nature; (5) regret of environmental damage and perhaps despair of the future; and (6) love and respect of species and natural landscapes. Finally, we discuss how nature as a theme embedded in Canadian literature can be harnessed to further the compelling objectives of environmental literacy by providing sympathetic insights into the relationships of people and society with the species and ecosystems with which they share Canada.Key words: nature, literature, culture, Canada, environmental literacy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Milla Benicio

RESUMO O principal objetivo deste artigo é traçar o itinerário científico e filosófico que permitiu à modernidade a criação de um novo campo de visibilidade dentro da ciência, enfraqueceu o antigo pressuposto da centralidade do homem em relação aos demais seres e levou a uma complexa transformação nas relações do homem com o mundo natural. Nosso foco será, portanto, a grande reorganização epistemológica e cultural do Ocidente, cujas quebras de paradigmas revolucionaram não apenas as noções ligadas à natureza, mas, principalmente, ao papel do homem nesse cenário.Palavras-chave: Reorganização Epistemológica; Homem; Mundo Natural.      ABSTRACT This article aims to draw the scientific and philosophical route which allowed to modernity the creation of a new field of visibility within science. This field weakened the old assumption of the centrality of human beings in relation to other and led to a complex transformation in human relationships with the natural world. Our focus will therefore be the major epistemological reorganization of the Western, whose breaking paradigms revolutionized not only the concepts related to the nature, but, mainly, to the role of the man in this scenario.Keywords: Epistemological Reorganization; Man; Natural World.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gokil Prasad Gangwar

Though the pesticides have adverse effects but they still are very important in crop protection. Hence, present study on compatibility of fungal bioagent (Trichoderma harzianum) of bacterial leaf blight of rice with chemical pesticides which are commonly used in rice cultivation was carried out with aim to look the possibilities of integrating biological control with chemical control to manage bacterial leaf blight of rice effectively. All the chemical pesticides (fungicides, antibiotic, insecticides and herbicides) exhibited varying adverse effect on mycelial growth of T. harzianum but none of these was antisporulant. Among fungicides and antibiotic, copper oxychloride and streptocycline was compatible with T. harzianum at all concentrations (2000, 1000, 500 and 250 ppm) but mancozeb exhibited compatibility only on lower concentrations (500 and 250 ppm). All insecticides and herbicides were compatible with T. harzianum at all concentrations (2000, 1000, 500 and 250 ppm). Further studies are required in this area of research.


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