Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems

Many modern agroecosystems are unstable as a consequence of constant human intervention in crop systems which ignore ecological principles. Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems explores entomological aspects of agriculture and analyzes the ecological basis for the maintenance of biodiversity in agriculture. Assembling a wide variety of information on the subject of agricultural diversity for pest suppression, Altieri clearly presents the information and research to expand your understanding of basic principles of pest management. This enables you to devise practical strategies for your specific pest management needs. Altieri describes the theory and practice of enhancing biological pest control in agricultural systems by managing vegetational diversity in the forms of multiple cropping, cover cropping, rotations, and other spatial and temporal designs. Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems stresses the importance of assessing each situation separately and developing long-term vegetation management strategies with regard to socioeconomic and cultural factors. It focuses on the ways in which biodiversity can contribute to the design of pest-stable agroecosystems. Altieri includes studies on intercropping, cover cropping, weed management, and crop-field border vegetation manipulation and covers the effects of these diverse systems on pest population density and the mechanisms underlying pest reduction in polycultures.As an amazing amount of research on biodiversity has emerged during the past 15 years, Altieri addresses important topics of concern to those involved in agriculture, such as :

• ecological theory and pest management
• the role of plant diversity on the biology of beneficial insects
• insect regulation in diverse agroecosystems
• manipulation of plant diversity in agroecosystems
• ecological and socioeconomic implicationsThe author's considerable theoretical and practical background from years of research and implementation work in California and Latin America will benefit all who read Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems. Private consultants (IPM practitioners), researchers, university students, and farmers interested in IPM, pest control, and biological control will find much of value in book's coverage of entomology, insect ecology, biological control, and vegetation management.