Insect pests remain a major threat to crop production primarily because of their ability to inflict severe damage on crop yields, as well as their role as key vectors of disease. Early identification of pests is critical to the success of integrated pest management (IPM) programmes and essential for the development of phytosanitary/quarantine regimes to prevent the introduction of invasive insect pests to new environments.
Advances in monitoring of native and invasive insect pests of crops reviews the wealth of research on techniques to monitor and thus prevent threats from both native and invasive insect pests. The book considers recent advances in areas such as sampling, identifying and modelling pest populations.
With its considered approach, the book explores current best practices for the detection, identification and modelling of native and invasive insect pests of crops. The contributors offer farmers informed advice on how to mitigate a growing problem which has been exacerbated as a result of climate change.
Dr Michelle Fountain is Head of Pest and Pathogen Ecology at the world-famous NIAB East Malling (formerly East Malling Research), UK. She is internationally renowned for her research on integrated insect pest management (IPM) and insect pollination in fruit horticulture. Dr Fountain is co-editor of Integrated management of diseases and pests of tree fruit, published by Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing in 2019.
Dr Tom Pope is Reader in Entomology and Integrated Pest Management at Harper Adams University, a leading agricultural university in the UK. A fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, Dr Pope is a globally recognised expert in tracking and understanding the behaviour of insect and other pests as well as in the design and implementation of IPM programmes.
Dr Archie K. Murchie is an applied agricultural entomologist working in the Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute, which is a Government-funded organisation based in Northern Ireland. He obtained his PhD in biological control of crop pests in 1997 from Rothamsted Research and Keele University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.
Dr. William (Bill) Hutchison is a Professor and Extension Entomologist at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, USA. His expertise is applied insect population ecology, as it relates to the development of innovative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs for a variety of fruit and vegetable crops. He has also been active in evaluating the long-term sustainability of insect-resistant, genetically engineered (GE) maize, and implementing GE crops into IPM programs. He is also active in international IPM research, with a current US-AID project in East Africa.
Dr Alistair Drake is a retired entomologist who holds honorary positions with The University of New South Wales and the Institute for Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra. His research interests include the development of radar techniques for insect observation, their application to pest forecasting, aeroecology (especially of insects), and more general aspects of animal migration and applied ecology. He has co-authored a monograph on radar entomology and co-edited a multiauthor book on insect migration.
