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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Fort Lauderdale, Florida » Invasive Plant Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #414687
Research Project: Development and Implementation of Biological Control Programs for Natural Area Weeds in the Southeastern United States

Location: Invasive Plant Research Laboratory

Title: Enhancing Pre-release Studies for Weed Biocontrol Agents: Existing and Emerging Tools

Author
item HINZ, HARIET - Centre For Agriculture & Biosciences International (CABI)
item CABRERA WALSH, GUILLERMO - Fuedei
item PATERSON, IAIN - Rhodes University
item PAYNTER, QUENTIN - Landcare Research
item SCHWARZLANDER, MARK - University Of Idaho
item Smith, Melissa
item WEYL, PHILIP - Centre For Agriculture & Biosciences International (CABI)

Submitted to: BioControl
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/27/2024
Publication Date: 9/4/2024
Citation: Hinz, H., Cabrera Walsh, G., Paterson, I., Paynter, Q., Schwarzlander, M., Smith, M., Weyl, P. 2024. Enhancing Pre-release Studies for Weed Biocontrol Agents: Existing and Emerging Tools. BioControl. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2024.105607.

Interpretive Summary: This manuscript explores various ways to improve pre-release safety testing for biological control agents. These include incorporating multi-disciplinary teams to address complex ecological, chemical, and molecular questions.

Technical Abstract: Thorough pre-release studies to determine the environmental safety of biological control agents and to try and predict their effectiveness in controlling the target weed are one of the most crucial parts of a biological control project. Over the last 50-60 years, the scientific rigour of pre-release investigations has continuously improved, reflected in a continuous decrease of the incidences of nontarget attack. Success rates have also improved, but have been more variable, and especially the proportion of biocontrol agent releases leading to heavy impact remained at a maximum of about 25% since the 1950s. In this paper, we review four methodological areas that we believe can contribute to further improve safety testing, especially to more accurately predict the realized host range of an agent in the introduced range. These methodological areas are chemical ecology, the prediction of field host use via the relative performance of the agent on the nontarget compared to the target, quantitative field host range data, and experimental evolutionary studies. Although traditional host-specificity testing methods will most likely remain the core type of tests to determine the environmental safety of weed biological control agents, the studies presented can all contribute additional aspects to further increase the reliability and interpretation of these data. Then four methods are reviewed that may help to increase the effectiveness of released agents, including agent and plant traits associated with a higher likelihood of success, experimental and field-based impact assessments, studies on the climatic suitability of agents, and plant demographic studies. The caveat of some of these studies is that they are context specific and will not be suitable for all systems, and that more post-release data is necessary to verify their predictions. In conclusion, we have no doubt that with the further development of some of the above-mentioned methodologies as well as novel technological advances, pre-release studies will continue to improve and refine predictions on the environmental safety and effectiveness of weed biocontrol agents and will thus further increase the credibility and success rate of the discipline. We hope that this paper will contribute to this effect and will motivate biocontrol scientists to be more methodological and systematic when conducting pre-release studies.