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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Maricopa, Arizona » U.S. Arid Land Agricultural Research Center » Pest Management and Biocontrol Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #239949
Title: Using Existing Methods in New Ecosystems- Can we Just Plug and Play.

Author
item MANSFIELD, S - Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
item Hagler, James

Submitted to: International Symposium on Biological Control of Arthropods
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/8/2009
Publication Date: 2/8/2009
Citation: Mansfield, S., Hagler, J.R. 2009. Using Existing Methods in New Ecosystems- Can we Just Plug and Play.. International Symposium on Biological Control of Arthropods.

Interpretive Summary: A comparison of the insect fauna associated with cotton fields in the USA and Australia shows that there are many ecologically similar pest and beneficial species. Pest management strategies in both regions have followed a similar pattern of pest control with a shift from insecticide intensive regimes to an IPM system that incorporates conservation biological control with the use of selective insecticides. However, knowledge of the beneficial predator complex in Australian cotton lags behind that of USA cotton. The use of predator gut content assay techniques (e.g., ELISA) to identify predators of key pests began almost 20 years ago in the USA but use of such methods in Australian is much more recent. In this review we compare the effectiveness of ELISA techniques for several ecologically similar insect species. ELISA detection of prey marked with exotic proteins proved effective in both the original (USA) and new (Australia) ecosystems, but ELISA using a pest specific antibody was less effective in the new ecosystem.

Technical Abstract: A comparison of the insect fauna associated with cotton fields in the USA and Australia shows that there are many ecologically similar pest and beneficial species. Pest Management strategies in both regions have followed a similar pattern of pest control with a shift from insecticide intensive regimes to an IPM system that incorporates conservation biological control with the use of selective insecticides. However, knowledge of the beneficial predator complex in Australian cotton lags behind that of USA cotton. The use of ELISA techniques to identify predators of particular pests began almost 20 years ago in the USA but use of such methods in Australia is much more recent. In review we compare the effectivenee of ELISA techniques for several ecologically similar species. ELISA detection of prey marked with exotic proteins proved effective in both the original (USA) and new (Australia) ecosystems, but ELISA using a pest specific antibody was less effective in the new ecosystem.