Back to Search
Start Over
Pest and Disease Management: Why We Shouldn't Go against the Grain
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 9, p e75892 (2013), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2013
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2013.
-
Abstract
- Given the wide range of scales and mechanisms by which pest or disease agents disperse, it is unclear whether there might exist a general relationship between scale of host heterogeneity and spatial spread that could be exploited by available management options. In this model-based study, we investigate the interaction between host distributions and the spread of pests and diseases using an array of models that encompass the dispersal and spread of a diverse range of economically important species: a major insect pest of coniferous forests in western North America, the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae); the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae, one of the most-widespread and best-studied bacterial plant pathogens; the mosquito Culex erraticus, an important vector for many human and animal pathogens, including West Nile Virus; and the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, the causal agent of potato late blight. Our model results reveal an interesting general phenomenon: a unimodal (‘humpbacked’) relationship in the magnitude of infestation (an index of dispersal or population spread) with increasing grain size (i.e., the finest scale of patchiness) in the host distribution. Pest and disease management strategies targeting different aspects of host pattern (e.g., abundance, aggregation, isolation, quality) modified the shape of this relationship, but not the general unimodal form. This is a previously unreported effect that provides insight into the spatial scale at which management interventions are most likely to be successful, which, notably, do not always match the scale corresponding to maximum infestation. Our findings could provide a new basis for explaining historical outbreak events, and have implications for biosecurity and public health preparedness.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Phytophthora infestans
Science
Population
Biosecurity
Pseudomonas syringae
Disease Vectors
Communicable Diseases
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Dendroctonus
Animals
education
Plant Diseases
education.field_of_study
Multidisciplinary
biology
Host (biology)
Ecology
business.industry
fungi
Pest control
Disease Management
food and beverages
Models, Theoretical
15. Life on land
biology.organism_classification
Coleoptera
Culex
Host-Pathogen Interactions
Medicine
Biological dispersal
Pest Control
PEST analysis
business
Animal Distribution
Mountain pine beetle
Research Article
010606 plant biology & botany
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 8
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....852ceb2a5b09e0fd86fbb9d44f7c84bf