Thaumetopoea pityocampa i nematodes entomopatògens : un mètode alternatiu de control biològic de la plaga

L'objectiu principal d'aquesta investigació és determinar la viabilitat dels nematodes entomopatògens per controlar les plagues de Thaumetopoea pityocampa, tenint en compte que presenten tot un seguit de característiques que els fan adequats per al control de diferents plagues d'insectes

Seqüencien el genoma de tres vespes parasitàries

Un consorci internacional de científics, en el qual ha participat l'investigador de la UAB Deodoro Oliveira, ha seqüenciat el genoma de tres espècies de vespes parasitàries, del gènere Nasonia. Es tracta d'una recerca que aporta nous coneixements bàsics sobre els mecanismes genètics de l'evolució. Però, també, és de gran importància en el control de plagues agrícoles i de malalties de transmissió per insectes, ja que les vespes parasitàries piquen i ponen els ous en molts altres insectes més grans, molts d'ells causants de plagues agrícoles i de malalties infeccioses. La recerca podria obrir les portes a noves vies per controlar les plagues i l'expansió d'aquestes malalties.Un consorcio internacional de científicos, en el que ha participado el investigador de la UAB Deodoro Oliveira, ha secuenciado el genoma de tres especies de avispas parasitarias, del género Nasonia. Se trata de una investigación que aporta nuevos conocimientos básicos sobre los mecanismos genéticos de la evolución. También es de gran importancia en el control de plagas agrícolas y de enfermedades de transmisión por insectos, ya que las avispas parasitarias pican y ponen los huevos en muchos otros insectos mayores, muchos de ellos causantes de plagas y enfermedades infecciosas. La investigación podría abrir las puertas a nuevas vías para controlar las plagas y la expansión de estas enfermedades.An international consortium of scientists, including UAB researcher Deodoro Oliveira, have sequenced the genome of three species of parasitoid wasps of the genus Nasonia. The research offers new basic information on the genetic mechanisms of evolution. It is also of great importance for the control of agricultural pests and of insect-borne diseases, since parasitoid wasps bite and lay eggs on much larger insects, many of which are the ones to later cause plagues or spread infectious diseases. The research could pave the way for new methods of controlling these plagues and preventing the propagation of diseases

Modeling Epidemic Spread in Synthetic Populations - Virtual Plagues in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

A virtual plague is a process in which a behavior-affecting property spreads among characters in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The MMOG individuals constitute a synthetic population, and the game can be seen as a form of interactive executable model for studying disease spread, albeit of a very special kind. To a game developer maintaining an MMOG, recognizing, monitoring, and ultimately controlling a virtual plague is important, regardless of how it was initiated. The prospect of using tools, methods and theory from the field of epidemiology to do this seems natural and appealing. We will address the feasibility of such a prospect, first by considering some basic measures used in epidemiology, then by pointing out the differences between real world epidemics and virtual plagues. We also suggest directions for MMOG developer control through epidemiological modeling. Our aim is understanding the properties of virtual plagues, rather than trying to eliminate them or mitigate their effects, as would be in the case of real infectious disease.Comment: Accepted for presentation at Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference in Tokyo in September 2007. All comments to the authors (mail addresses are in the paper) are welcom

The Surprising History and Geography of the First "Organic Farming" Association

Readers of narratives of the history of organic farming in Australia will be familiar with such accounts beginning in the "1980s". In questing after the earliest organic farming society, and more particularly in pursuing the spread of the "organic" meme from its 1940 birth in Britain, it was therefore a great surprise to uncover the Australian Organic Faming and Gardening Society (AOFGS) founded in October 1944. This appears to be the world's first "organic farming" association. It also resets the organic clock for Australia back by four decades. Here was an association, pre-dating the UK Soil Association by two years, formed half a world away from the birthplace of "organic", in a country at war, under food rationing, and with its workforce under Manpower regulations. Yet organic farming principles were clearly articulated by this Society, perhaps as clearly articulated as they have ever been, and particularised for Australia. The Society was constrained from publishing their journal due to wartime constraints on paper. The first appearance of the Organic Farming Digest (OFD) was in April 1946. Thereafter, for nearly a decade, the Society regularly published a journal, with the last issue appearing in 1954. This paper explores the Society; its principles; its journals; its people; its interactions with key organic figures of the time including Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Eve Balfour, Albert Howard, and Jerome Rodale; its Australian contributors from five states, including Colonel Harold White and Professor Sir Stanton Hicks; its progress and ultimately its demise; and touch on how this history became lost

White ants, empire and entomo-politics in South Asia

By focussing on the history of white ants in colonial South Asia, this article shows how insects were ubiquitous and fundamental to the shaping of British colonial power. British rule in India was vulnerable to white ants because these insects consumed paper and wood, the key material foundations of the colonial state. The white ant problem also made the colonial state more resilient and intrusive. The sphere of strict governmental intervention was extended to include both animate and inanimate nonhumans, while these insects were invoked as symbols to characterise colonised landscapes, peoples and cultures. Nonetheless, encounters with white ants were not entirely within the control of the colonial state. Despite effective state intervention, white ants didn’t vanish altogether, and remained objects of everyday control till the final decade of colonial rule and after. Meanwhile, colonised and post-colonial South Asians used white ants to articulate their own distinct political agendas. Over time, white ants featured variously as metaphors for Islamic decadence, British colonial exploitation, communism, democratic socialism and more recently, the Indian National Congress. This article argues that co-constitutive encounters between the worlds of insects and politics have been an intrinsic feature of British colonialism and its legacies in South Asia

The Path to Otopia: an Australian Perspective

This paper is a response to an invitation from SASA to deliver a keynote address on the topic: "The History of Innovative Organic Knowledge: Past, Present (and Future?)” to the Soil Association of South Australia (SASA) on the occasion of the launching of the SASA Historical Research Archive at the State Library of South Australia, Adelaide. It identifies three waves of organic advocacy in Australia. It describes the author's recently published research on the Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society (1944-1955), the world's first society to call itself an "organic farming" society, the first society to publish an organic journal (the "Organic Farming Digest"), and the first society to publish a set of organic agriculture principles. Looking to the future, the term "Otopia" is coined to describe a state of 100% organic agriculture. At the historical rate of growth exhibited by the organic sector (data available for the past 8 years), it will take 584 years to reach a global state of Otopia if we assume arithmetic growth (of 27.1% pa), or 27 years if we assume compounding growth (of 16.4% pa)

Reading, Writing and Power

This article’s goal is to discuss the relationship between reading, writing and power. (Unfortunately, space forbids more than an introduction to this topic.) We live in a postmodern society where some people doubt whether truth is knowable. I will show that the power of the written word is great enough so that receptive readers can overcome the barriers against understanding it as the author meant it, and therefore reading can teach the truth. Obviously, this statement will be qualified at a later point. While this article will center on power, it is inseparable from the other traits of literature.The biblical term “Word” often means both the written and the spoken word. Much, if not all, I say will apply to the word spoken as well as the word written. I will begin by listing a few biblical texts that show the relationship between the Word and power

Ecologically-Based Management of Rodent Pests

Farm Management,

Spatial uncertainty and structuration effects on preventive management of locust plagues: a multi-agent perspective

The spatial structure of locust outbreaks is a major item of planning and success of locust preventive management strategies. Indeed, preventive management relies on where and when survey teams have to be sent to explore and report the biotope situation and the potential locust population development in order to react in time to any upsurge. The spatial concentration of areas favourable to outbreak has been documented in many species. Other spatial limits are the areas where the preventive management fails to collect information, either because of insecurity or remoteness. We explored these spatial specificities with the help of ALMMAS, a spatially explicit multi-agent system representing a typical preventive management system with 4 levels of agents: locusts moving randomly and causing intermittently outbreaks spatially localized, field teams conducting surveys and controlling locusts, a management centre hiring and funding the field teams, and a budget holder funding the management centre depending on its own perception of the risk. We simulated 1) some areas where field teams have a low access (only through a corridor), 2) some areas where field teams have no access at all and 3) some areas where the probability to observe initial outbreaks is concentrated in hotspots. We explored the effects of number and size of these areas on the proportion of plague times through series of 100-year simulations. We observed that a strong effort of the budget holder to keep its funding through time might be annihilated with only 5% of a spatial territory with a restricted access. Logically, we obtained also that the largest the areas without access are, the worse the proportion of plague years is. But interestingly, if these inaccessible areas are divided in several small spots, the plagues are more numerous than with only one equivalent inaccessible area. This is explainable through a border-effect, i.e. more kilometres of frontiers to control when there are several inaccessible areas instead of one. The concentration of outbreaks in hotspots also increased the probability to observe plagues. Here too, the spatial distribution of only one hotspot was easier to control for the field teams than of several hotspots of identical size. But particularly, an interesting finding was that with only one hotspot, the period of cyclic behaviour of the budget holder between awareness and the reduction of funding was longer than with several smaller hotspots. These results highlight the need to consider the spatial specificity and accessibility of each locust species when planning the sustainability of anti-locust management systems. The cyclic outbreaks of some locust species, despite the significant budgets in order to establish a preventive management system, may be related to these spatial specificities. Further studies should also focus on the effects of concentrating the attention of surveys in outbreak hotspots

Strategic Pest Management Booklets for Farmers in Kaffrine, Senegal

abstract: When Kaffrine, Senegal, is faced with the threat of a locust plague, farmers tend to struggle with determining what actions and when they should take place to prevent a plague from occurring. The inability of farmers to readily identify the early threats of a locust plague is a primary issue that has been affecting communities in Kaffrine for millennia. Locust plagues affect the functionality of Senegal’s ecosystems, the welfare of its social systems, and the peoples’ economic opportunities. The project focuses on the creation of 300 pest identification booklets that provide five villages in Kaffrine the proper education to prevent locust plagues from forming. I have partnered with the Global Locust Initiative (GLI) to help make these booklets come to fruition as the booklets target the lack of early detection awareness that is at the root of locust plagues. By providing the villages with these booklets, the farmers and community members, will be more educated on how to identify and act on the early threats of a plague. Additional outcomes of creating these booklets are as follows: improved well-being of the farming community, increased millet yields, and enhanced global food system sustainability. As locusts are a migratory pest, it is recommended that more stakeholders are provided the proper educational material to help them identify the early threats of a locust plague to prevent negative externalities from being imposed on the surrounding ecology, individuals, and agriculture