With rare exceptions, such as bees and silkworms, the insect world is a source of pests rather than of pets or pack animals.In an age of miniaturisation, however, a few researchers are wondering if more insects might be harnessed to the service of man.
Ecologists and conservationists often appreciate the contribution of natural habitat to biodiversity and potential ecosystem services such as biological pest control, whereas many farmers see habitat remnants as a waste of cropland or source of pests.
The biological control of pest insects in farmlands is an important ecosystem service provided by natural enemies, a tenet that is frequently supported by natural ecosystems; however, natural ecosystems can sometimes serve as a source of pests and can maintain them as an ecosystem disservice.
The wild Cicer species from the secondary gene-pool (particularly C. bijugum, C. pinnatifidum and C. judaicum) are known to possess multiple sources of pest and disease resistance and tolerance to abiotic stresses including drought and cold [ 7, 8].
Diatomaceous earth products are a source of Organic pest control and are registered for use against bed bugs, roaches, crickets, fleas, ticks, spiders, and many other pests.
Wild plant species are often considered a source of crop pests in mixed landscapes but this view rarely considers pest spillover in the opposite direction (from crop fields to natural vegetation), or spatiotemporal variability in resources between crop and wild habitats.
A screened refuge, as proposed here, serves as a (passive) source of susceptible pests similar to that considered in the works cited above, and we provide what we believe are the first analytical results for the case where both the source (refuge) and the crop are finite, migration is bi-directional, and mutation and fitness costs of resistance in the refuge are included.
If you feed your pets inside, keep in mind that a major source of pantry pests is dry pet food and bird feed.
For example, introducing predispersal biological control agents that dramatically reduce seed density of pest plants could also reduce the importance of self-thinning processes as sources of selection in determining the traits of reproducing adults (Fig. 2 and described later).
