Despite its theoretical prominence and sound principles, integrated pest management (IPM) continues to suffer from anemic adoption rates in developing countries. To shed light on the reasons, we surveyed the opinions of a large and diverse pool of IPM professionals and practitioners from 96 countries by using structured concept mapping. The first phase of this method elicited 413 open-ended responses on perceived obstacles to IPM. Analysis of responses revealed 51 unique statements on obstacles, the most frequent of which was "insufficient training and technical support to farmers." Cluster analyses, based on participant opinions, grouped these unique statements into six themes: research weaknesses, outreach weaknesses, IPM weaknesses, farmer weaknesses, pesticide industry interference, and weak adoption incentives. Subsequently, 163 participants rated the obstacles expressed in the 51 unique statements according to importance and remediation difficulty. Respondents from developing countries and high-income countries rated the obstacles differently. As a group, developing-country respondents rated "IPM requires collective action within a farming community" as their top obstacle to IPM adoption. Respondents from high-income countries prioritized instead the "shortage of well-qualified IPM experts and extensionists." Differential prioritization was also evident among developing-country regions, and when obstacle statements were grouped into themes. Results highlighted the need to improve the participation of stakeholders from developing countries in the IPM adoption debate, and also to situate the debate within specific regional contexts. sustainable agriculture | technology adoption | collective action dilemma
The study of insect responses to temperature has a long tradition in science, starting from Réaumur's work on caterpillars in the 18th century. In 1932, Ernst Janisch wrote: ‘The problem is (and will be more and more in the future) one of the most important ones in entomology […]’. Almost 90 years after this paper, its prediction still holds true, with a sustained interest of the scientific community for the study of insect responses to temperature, especially in the context of climate change. We present a review of the major developments in the field of insect development responses to temperature and analyze the growing importance of modeling approaches in the literature using a bibliographic analysis. We discuss recent advances and future directions for phenology‐modeling based on temperature‐dependent development rate. Finally, we highlight the need for a change of paradigm toward a system‐based approach in order to overcome current challenges and to predict insect phenology more accurately, with direct implications in agriculture, conservation biology, and epidemiology.
1.A major barrier for the scientific community of climate change biologists is the spatial mismatch between the size of organisms and the resolution at which global climate data are collected and modelled. Thus, the development of integrative and quantitative tools for the monitoring and spatial characterization of microclimates across spatial scales is a key issue for climate change ecologists. 2. We proposed an integrative toolbox for quantifying the spatial heterogeneity in surface temperatures by bringing together procedures of unmanned aerial vehicles, thermal imagery, orthomosaic, GIS classification and spatial metrics. This toolbox permits to yield high-resolution visual and infrared orthoimages that are processed into a GIS for selecting surfaces of interest in the landscape (e.g. soil, vegetation). Then, the thermal matrices of selected surfaces (i.e. temperature values of the pixels belonging to the selected surfaces only) are processed within R to generate a variety of thermal landscape metrics (e.g. thermal patch richness and density, thermal aggregation and cohesion index). 3. We applied this toolbox to the thermal characterization of mountainous agricultural landscapes in Ecuador with implications for ectothermic pest dynamics. UAV flights at a height of 60 m above-ground level allowed us to acquired high-resolution visual and thermal images (1 and 5 cm/pixel, respectively) for 12 potato fields with a mean surface of 1017 AE 117 m 2 . Landscape metrics on plant and soil surfaces showed that crop phenology drives the spatial patterns of surface temperatures and strongly modifies the overall thermal ecology of crop fields, with potential implications for ectothermic pest occurrence and dynamics. 4. Overall, our toolbox affords a timely and innovative methodological framework to better assess the thermal heterogeneity of natural landscapes across a wide range of spatial scales. In particular, this toolbox would be of topical interest for ecologists trying to bridge the gap between the resolution of their climatic data and the body size of their study organisms.
Abstract1. Thermal biologists are interested in generating paired data on development rates and temperatures, but they are in need of automated tools to accurately analyse this data.2. Fed with a database of more than 30 existing development models, the devRate package provides tools for plotting and visualizing data, selecting the most appropriate model, and mapping and forecasting ectotherm phenology using temperature time-series data. Most proposed models are for arthropods, mainly insects (e.g. Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera).3. This paper presents the main functions of the package and provides an example using an empirical dataset.4. The devRate package provides investigators with a unique set of tools and a database that allows them to fit development rate models, and to compare arthropod response to temperature. K E Y W O R D Slife cycle, model fitting, performance, physiological process
BackgroundMost carabid beetles are particularly sensitive to local habitat characteristics. Although in China grasslands account for more than 40% of the national land, their biodiversity is still poorly known. The aim of this paper is to identify the main environmental characteristics influencing carabid diversity in different types of grassland in northern China.MethodsWe investigated the influence of vegetation (plant biomass, cover, density, height and species richness), soil (bulk density, above ground litter, moisture and temperature) and climate (humidity, precipitation and temperature) on carabid community structure (species richness, species composition and functional diversity—measured as body size, movement and total diversity) in three types of grasslands: desert, typical and meadow steppes. We used Canonical correspondence analysis to investigate the role of habitat characteristics on species composition and eigenvector spatial filtering to investigate the responses of species richness and functional diversities.ResultsWe found that carabid community structure was strongly influenced by local habitat characteristics and particularly by climatic factors. Carabids in the desert steppe showed the lowest richness and functional diversities. Climate predictors (temperature, precipitation and humidity) had positive effects on carabid species richness at both regional and ecosystem levels, with difference among ecosystems. Plant diversity had a positive influence on carabid richness at the regional level. Soil compaction and temperature were negatively related to species richness at regional level. Climatic factors positively influenced functional diversities, whereas soil temperature had negative effects. Soil moisture and temperature were the most important drivers of species composition at regional level, whereas the relative importance of the various environmental parameters varied among ecosystems.DiscussionCarabid responses to environmental characteristics varied among grassland types, which warns against generalizations and indicates that management programs should be considered at grassland scale. Carabid community structure is strongly influenced by climatic factors, and can therefore be particularly sensitive to ongoing climate change.
Summary Simulation models are essential tools in landscape genetics to study how genetic processes are affected by landscape heterogeneity. However, there is still a need to develop different simulation approaches in landscape genetics, so that users may dispose of additional programs to explore further the impact of land‐use and land‐cover changes on population genetics. We developed a spatially explicit, individual‐based, forward‐time, landscape‐genetic simulation model combined with a landscape cellular automaton to represent evolutionary processes of adaptation and population dynamics in changing landscapes, using the NetLogo environment. This simulation model represents a unique tool for scientists and scholars looking for a practical and pedagogical framework to explore both empirical and theoretical situations.
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