Area-Wide Control of Insect Pests


Book Description

Insect pests are becoming a problem of ever-more biblical proportions. This new textbook collates a series of selected papers that attempt to address various fundamental components of area-wide insect pest control. Of special interest are the numerous papers on pilot and operational programs that pay special attention to practical problems encountered during program implementation. It’s a compilation of more than 60 papers authored by experts from more than 30 countries.




Locust Handbook


Book Description




Phenotypic Plasticity of Insects


Book Description

This book explores the profound importance of phenotypic plasticity as a central organizing theme for understanding biology. Chapters take a broad, integrative approach to explain how physical and biological environmental stimuli (temperature, photoperiod, nutrition, population density, predator presence, etc.), influence insect biochemical, physiological, learning, and developmental processes, altering phenotype, which then influences performance, ecology, life-history, survival, fitness, and subsequent evolution. Topics include endocrinology, development, body size, allometry, polyphenism, reproduction, reproductive and life-history tradeoffs, alternative mating and life-history strategies, density-dependent prophylaxis, physiological adaptation, acclimation, homeostasis, heat-shock proteins, learning, adaptive anti-predator behavior, and evolution of phenotypic plasticity.




Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters


Book Description

Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, Second Edition provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth's biosphere caused by diseases, algal blooms, insects, animals, species extinction, deforestation, land degradation, and comet and asteroid strikes, with important implications for humans. This second edition from Elsevier's Hazards and Disasters Series incorporates perspectives from the natural and social sciences to offer in-depth coverage of threats from microscopic organisms to celestial objects and their potential impacts. Contributions from expert biological, health, ecological, environmental, wildlife, physical, and health scientists, readers will gain valuable insights on damages, causality, economic impacts, preparedness, and mitigation. - Provides inter- and multi-disciplinary research accessible to both specialists and non-specialists - Includes newly added chapters on emerging hazards and risks to earth's ecosystems (land conversion and habitat loss) and human health (spread of diseases) - Contains full-color tables, maps, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs of hazardous processes




New Strategies in Locust Control


Book Description

In the late eighties large-scale control operations were carried out to control a major desert locust upsurge in Africa. For the first time since the banning of organochlorine pesticides these operations relied mainly on non-persistent pesticides such as organophosphates and pyrethroids. The amount of pesticides sprayed and the area covered were probably the highest in the history of locust control and raised criticism with respect to efficacy, economic viability and environmental impact. As a consequence, applied research into the problem was intensified, both at the national and the international level, with the goal of finding new and environmentally sound approaches and solutions to locust and grasshopper control. Emphasis was laid on developing new control agents and techniques.




Locust


Book Description

Throughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the continent, turning noon into dusk, demolishing farm communities, and bringing trains to a halt as the crushed bodies of insects greased the rails. In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust "the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country." From the Dakotas to Texas, from California to Iowa, the swarms pushed thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation, prompting the federal government to enlist some of the greatest scientific minds of the day and thereby jumpstarting the fledgling science of entomology. Over the next few decades, the Rocky Mountain locust suddenly -- and mysteriously -- vanished. A century later, Jeffrey Lockwood set out to discover why. Unconvinced by the reigning theories, he searched for new evidence in musty books, crumbling maps, and crevassed glaciers, eventually piecing together the elusive answer: A group of early settlers unwittingly destroyed the locust's sanctuaries just as the insect was experiencing a natural population crash. Drawing on historical accounts and modern science, Locust brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in America in the late-nineteenth century, even as it solves one of the greatest ecological mysteries of our time.




Lost Crops of Africa


Book Description

This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.




The Fungal Spore and Disease Initiation in Plants and Animals


Book Description

This treatise is focused on early aspects of fungal pathogenesis in plant and animal hosts. Our aim in choosing the topics and contributors was to demonstrate common approaches to studies of fungal-plant and fungal-animal interactions, particularly at the biochemical and molecular Ievels. For example, the initial events of adh«sion of fungal spores to the exposed surface tissues of the host are essential for subsequent invasion of the plant or animal and establishment of pathogenesis. A point of consensus among investigators who have directed their attention to such events in plants, insects, and vertebrates isthat spore adhesion to the host cuticle or epithelium is more than a simple binding event. lt is a complex and potentially pivotal process in fungal-plant interactions which "may involve the secretion of ftuids that prepare the infection court for the development of morphological stages of the germling" and subsequent invasion of the host (Nicholson and Epstein, Chapter 1). The attachment of the fungal propagule to the arthropod cuticle is also "mediated by the chemical components present on the outer layer of the spore wall and the epicuticle . . . . Initial attachment may be reinforced further by either the active secretion of adhesive materials or the modification of spore wall materiallocated at the [fungal spore arthropod] cuticle interface (Boucias and Pendland, Chapter 5).




Desert Locust Plagues


Book Description

For thousands of years, humans have found themselves vulnerable to plagues of desert locusts. Some fifty countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have been ravaged, at one time or another, by huge, devouring swarms of locusts. With the consequent, often total, destruction of crops and grazing, widespread hunger and starvation ensued. Colin Everard's book takes as its geographical focus the Horn of Africa, an area which throughout history has suffered catastrophically from locust plagues. Based on his own extensive experience in the region, Everard describes one of the greatest (albeit unsung) triumphs of the twentieth century, namely, how the desert locust scourge has, at last, been virtually brought under control.




Storm of Locusts


Book Description

Kai and Caleb Goodacre have been kidnapped just as rumors of a cult sweeping across the reservation leads Maggie and Hastiin to investigate an outpost, and what they find there will challenge everything they’ve come to know in this “badass” (The New York Times) action-packed sequel to Trail of Lightning. It’s been four weeks since the bloody showdown at Black Mesa, and Maggie Hoskie, Diné monster hunter, is trying to make the best of things. Only her latest bounty hunt has gone sideways, she’s lost her only friend, Kai Arviso, and she’s somehow found herself responsible for a girl with a strange clan power. Then the Goodacre twins show up at Maggie’s door with the news that Kai and the youngest Goodacre, Caleb, have fallen in with a mysterious cult, led by a figure out of Navajo legend called the White Locust. The Goodacres are convinced that Kai’s a true believer, but Maggie suspects there’s more to Kai’s new faith than meets the eye. She vows to track down the White Locust, then rescue Kai and make things right between them. Her search leads her beyond the Walls of Dinétah and straight into the horrors of the Big Water world outside. With the aid of a motley collection of allies, Maggie must battle body harvesters, newborn casino gods and, ultimately, the White Locust himself. But the cult leader is nothing like she suspected, and Kai might not need rescuing after all. When the full scope of the White Locust’s plans are revealed, Maggie’s burgeoning trust in her friends, and herself, will be pushed to the breaking point, and not everyone will survive.