Why demographic add modeling approaches should be adopted for estimating the effects of pesticides on biocontrol agents.

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that simplistic measures of toxicity such as the LC50 do not provide enough information about the actual effects that may occour in pesticide-exposed populations over longer time periods than a few days. In this paper we discuss the use of demography and population modeling for estimation of pesticid ecffects on pest and beneficial species and argue that these new approaches are essential to further our understanding of the potential impacts that pesticides might have on both pestand beneficial species such as biological control agents. Keywords:life table response experiments, demography, models, toxicology, LC50, pesticide