Biological Control and Integrated Pest Management

Abstract 

The manipulation of beneficial organisms remains a very important tool in integrated pest management programs of insect pests worldwide. This chapter describes the approaches to using biological control and a historical perspective of each. Recent developments in genetics, systematics, population dynamics, pesticide chemistry, and public opinion have led to increased scrutiny and inclusion of beneficial insects into IPM programs. This chapter describes these developments and the variety of approaches that have been used to implement biological control as a useful tactic in IPM. It also describes how biological control interacts with other IPM tactics, and the potential for better integration into IPM programs. 

Keywords Beneficial organisms · Importation biocontrol · Augmentation · Conservation biocontrol · Predators · Parasitoids 

9.1 Introduction 

Biological control has been a valuable tactic in pest management programs around the world for many years, but has undergone a resurgence in recent decades that parallels the development of IPM as an accepted practice for pest management. This chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive review of research involving biological control. Instead, it will try to focus on implementation of biological control practices in insect pest management programs. It will begin with an overview of the general concepts and challenges facing the use of beneficial organisms within each of the general approaches to biological control. A brief historical perspective of biological control follows. Next, the interaction of biological control with the various elements of integrated pest management programs is considered. Existing implementation, as well as potential uses of biological control in IPM are also considered.

9.2 Approaches to Biological Control 

Natural enemies have been utilized in the management of insect pests for centuries. However, this last 100 years has seen a dramatic increase in their use as well as our understanding of how they can better be manipulated as part of effective, safe, pest management systems. Recent advances in molecular systematics are shedding new light on classification of groups of beneficial insects such as the Hymenoptera (e.g. Sharkey, 2007), and delivery of this information on the internet makes it quickly and widely available (e.g. The Tree of Life Web Project at http://tolweb.org). Recent advances in the study of beneficial organism behavior (e.g. parasitoid foraging: Smid et al., 2007; van Nouhuys and Kaartinen, 2008) and reproductive biology (e.g. symbionts in parasitoids: Clark, 2007) are revealing surprising complexities in the life histories of these organisms. Understanding this complexity should lead to potential new methods for their manipulation. Despite the long history of utilizing natural enemies, it wasn’t until 1919 that the term biological control was apparently used for the first time by the late Harry Smith of the University of California (Smith, 1919). There has been debate regarding the scope and definition of biological control brought about by technological advances in the tools available for pest management. (see Nordlund, 1996). In this chapter I will follow the definition presented by DeBach (1964) as the “study, importation, augmentation, and conservation of beneficial organisms to regulate population densities of other organisms”. Biological control efforts conducted with predators and parasitoids still can be organized under three general approaches: importation, augmentation and conservation of natural enemies (Debach, 1964; Bellows and Fisher, 1999). Each of these approaches has been used to varying degrees in integrated pest management programs (see Fig. 9.1).