Dynamic Economic Thresholds for Insecticide Applications Against Agricultural Pests: Importance of Pest and Natural Enemy Migration

作者：Tamar Keasar, Éric Wajnberg, George E. Heimpel, Ian C.W. Hardy, Liora Shaltiel Harpaz, Daphna Gottlieb, Saskya van Nouhuys · 发表于：Journal of Economic Entomology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1093/jee/toad019 · 被引用次数：19 · 研究领域：Insect-Plant Interactions and Control、Plant and animal studies、Insect and Pesticide Research

In Integrated Pest Management programs, insecticides are applied to agricultural crops when pest densities exceed a predetermined economic threshold. Under conditions of high natural enemy density, however, the economic threshold can be increased, allowing for fewer insecticide applications. These adjustments, called 'dynamic thresholds', allow farmers to exploit existing biological control interactions without economic loss. Further, the ability of natural enemies to disperse from, and subsequently immigrate into, insecticide-sprayed areas can affect their biological control potential. We develop a theoretical approach to incorporate both pest and natural enemy movement across field borders into dynamic thresholds and explore how these affect insecticide applications and farmer incomes. Our model follows a pest and its specialist natural enemy over one growing season. An insecticide that targets the pest also induces mortality of the natural enemy, both via direct toxicity and reduced resource pest densities. Pest and natural enemy populations recover after spraying through within-field reproduction and by immigration from neighboring unsprayed areas. The number of insecticide applications and per-season farmer revenues are calculated for economic thresholds that are either fixed (ignoring natural enemy densities) or dynamic (incorporating them). The model predicts that using dynamic thresholds always leads to reduced insecticide application. The benefit of dynamic threshold...