NEW PAPER: Biomonitoring of biocontrol across the full annual cycle in temperate climates

Check out this new paper just published in Agricultural and Forest Entomology: Biomonitoring of biocontrol across the full annual cycle in temperate climates: Post-harvest, winter and early-season interaction data and methodological considerations for its collection

What’s going on in our agricultural fields when we stop looking? A lot of biocontrol that current monitoring and research is overlooking!

Ecological interactions vary with seasonal changes and following human disturbance, and biocontrol of crop pests by generalist predators is no different. Crop senescence and harvest can drive massive migrations, and activity rates change rapidly between winter and spring.

Biocontrol is super important in these periods given that eliminating pests at those points will prevent their establishment and population growth in the primary crop growth period. Despite this, very little research and monitoring focuses on them.

Alongside limited resources, methodological limitations restrict our ability to monitor interactions across the annual cycle. Emerging technologies and techniques pave the way to filling these knowledge gaps, but there are various considerations that limit year-round application.

This paper reviews the general and more situational considerations for monitoring biocontrol across the year and present a decision-making framework to help people decide which methods to use (and ideally combine!) for different questions in the hope of stimulating more research.

It was a massive pleasure for Jordan working on this with an amazing team of co-authors (the brilliant team of Domagoj Gajski, Radek Michalko, Ondřej Košulič & Stano Pekár) and a lot of this will be carried forward in the coming years with FERG!