Agent-based simulation of effects of stress on forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria Hübner) population dynamics

Babin-Fenske, Jennifer; Anand, Madhur

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.04.014

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Our results support previous findings that the forest tent caterpillar system is sensitive to climate and driven by predator–prey dynamics (Roland et al 1998, Cooke and Lorenzetti 2006, Cooke et al 2007, Babin‐Fenske and Anand 2011). Understanding the role of cycle synchronization and its integration with these other processes will be important to derive effective models and strategies for managing forest tent caterpillar outbreaks.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

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The dynamics of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks across east‐central Canada

Cooke¹,

MacQuarrie²,

Lorenzetti³

2011

Ecography

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An analysis of forest tent caterpillar Malacosoma disstria defoliation records from Ontario and Quebec over the period 1938–2002 indicates that outbreaks recur periodically and somewhat synchronously among regions of the two provinces. Cluster analysis revealed that the most strongly periodic, large‐scale, synchronized fluctuations occurred within three regions: northwestern Ontario, eastern Ontario/western Quebec and southeastern Quebec. Defoliation in the vast surrounding hinterlands tended to be infrequent and sporadic, loosely tracking defoliation in the core outbreak regions. One small cluster in northeastern Ontario stood out as anomalous, as a result of an increasing trend in the duration of periodic defoliation episodes, marked by an unprecedented double‐wave of defoliation that persisted from 1992 to 1999. This is the precise area where, in the early 2000s, trembling aspen Populus tremuloides stems were mapped as being in a state of decline of unprecedented severity and extent. Our results suggest forest tent caterpillar has the potential to cause significant impacts on forest health and, hence, carbon budgets in east‐central Canada and that the forest tent caterpillar deserves more attention as a model system of forest insect disturbance ecology.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…We used the time series of mean defoliation intensities to determine when forest tent caterpillar outbreaks occurred in each population. We defined an outbreak as occurring when the mean defoliation intensity exceeded the overall mean for the entire time series for two or more years (Babin‐Fenske and Anand 2011).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamics of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks across east‐central Canada

Cooke¹,

MacQuarrie²,

Lorenzetti³

2011

Ecography

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“…To our knowledge, agent-based approaches have not previously been applied to the question of quarantine lengths following insect invasions, though they have been used to address an array of other issues in insect biology, ranging from foraging networks and nest choice in ants (Jackson et al 2004 ; Pratt et al 2005 ) to landscape-level population studies (Arrignon et al 2007 ; Babin-Fenske and Anand 2011 ; Perez and Dragicevic 2012 ) and disease vector dynamics (Almeida et al 2010 ). The majority of the agent-based models on insects we have seen, including those cited above, are focused on adult behavior and how it scales up to population-level characteristics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An agent-based simulation of extirpation of Ceratitis capitata applied to invasions in California

Manoukis

Hoffman

2013

J Pest Sci

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We present an agent-based simulation (ABS) of Ceratitis capitata (“Medfly”) developed for estimating the time to extirpation of this pest in areas where quarantines and eradication treatments were immediately imposed. We use the ABS, implemented in the program MED-FOES, to study seven different outbreaks that occurred in Southern California from 2008 to 2010. Results are compared with the length of intervention and quarantine imposed by the State, based on a linear developmental model (thermal unit accumulation, or “degree-day”). MED-FOES is a useful tool for invasive species managers as it incorporates more information from the known biology of the Medfly, and includes the important feature of being demographically explicit, providing significant improvements over simple degree-day calculations. While there was general agreement between the length of quarantine by degree-day and the time to extirpation indicated by MED-FOES, the ABS suggests that the margin of safety varies among cases and that in two cases the quarantine may have been excessively long. We also examined changes in the number of individuals over time in MED-FOES and conducted a sensitivity analysis for one of the outbreaks to explore the role of various input parameters on simulation outcomes. While our implementation of the ABS in this work is motivated by C. capitata and takes extirpation as a postulate, the simulation is very flexible and can be used to study a variety of questions on the invasion biology of pest insects and methods proposed to manage or eradicate such species.

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“…For most forest insects, including the FTC, there are few data on dispersal distances, dispersal kernel shapes, emigration rates, and other aspects of dispersal behavior (Greenbank et al 1980;Safranyik et al 1992;Baltensweiler and Rubli 1999;Cobbold et al 2005) and even less knowledge of parasitoid dispersal (Godfray 1994;Mondor andRoland 1997, 1998;Roland and Taylor 1997;Cappuccino et al 1998;Rothman and Roland 1998;Hastings 2000;Cobbold et al 2005;Roth et al 2006;Babin-Fenske and Anand 2011). We therefore use very simple dispersal kernels.…”

Section: Dispersal Kernelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Forest Spatial Structure on Insect Outbreaks: Insights from a Host-Parasitoid Model

Hughes

Cobbold

Haynes

et al. 2015

The American Naturalist

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Understanding how cycles of forest-defoliating insects are affected by forest destruction is of major importance for forest management. Achieving such an understanding with data alone is difficult, however, because population cycles are typically driven by species interactions that are highly nonlinear. We therefore constructed a mathematical model to investigate the effects of forest destruction on defoliator cycles, focusing on defoliator cycles driven by parasitoids. Our model shows that forest destruction can increase defoliator density when parasitoids disperse much farther than defoliators because the benefits of reduced defoliator mortality due to increased parasitoid dispersal mortality exceed the costs of increased defoliator dispersal mortality. This novel result can explain observations of increased outbreak duration with increasing forest fragmentation in forest tent caterpillar populations. Our model also shows that larger habitat patches can mitigate habitat loss, with clear implications for forest management. To better understand our results, we developed an approximate model that shows that defoliator spatial dynamics can be predicted from the proportion of dispersing animals that land in suitable habitat. This approximate model is practically useful because its parameters can be estimated from widely available data. Our model thus suggests that forest destruction may exacerbate defoliator outbreaks but that management practices could mitigate such effects.

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Agent-based simulation of effects of stress on forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria Hübner) population dynamics

Cited by 18 publications

References 53 publications

The dynamics of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks across east‐central Canada

The dynamics of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks across east‐central Canada

An agent-based simulation of extirpation of Ceratitis capitata applied to invasions in California

Effects of Forest Spatial Structure on Insect Outbreaks: Insights from a Host-Parasitoid Model

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