Location: Pest Management Research
Project Number: 3032-30400-002-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Dec 17, 2025
End Date: Dec 16, 2030
Objective:
Objective 1: Identify and exploit synergies between weed biocontrol and insect pollinator management to enhance multiple agroecosystem services.
Sub-objective 1.A: Determine how native bees, honey bees, and non-bee pollinators interact with flowering invasive plants and invasive plant management.
Objective 2: Evaluate arthropod community dynamics across disturbed and intensively managed agroecosystems and native habitat.
Sub-objective 2.A: Determine how vertebrate grazing, energy development, and other anthropogenic activities alter arthropod abundances, diversities, and ecosystem services.
Sub-objective 2.B: Determine how native bees, honey bees, and non-bee pollinators interact with crops (e.g., pollination services).
Objective 3: Develop and improve weed biological control program implementation, evaluation, and management recommendations.
Sub-objective 3.A: Identify demographic and habitat factors associated with weed population variability and management impacts.
Sub-objective 3.B: Evaluating large-scale variation in agent and weed distributions.
Sub-objective 3.C: Developing best practices for biocontrol implementation and monitoring.
Approach:
Weeds cost U.S. agriculture billions of dollars annually in lost production and control costs. Pollinators improve ecosystem health and production yields by billions of dollars annually in agroecosystems (i.e., lands managed for food, energy/fuel, or fiber production). The goal of our project is to decrease weed abundance by increasing the efficacy of biological control agent development and improving weed-resistant habitat development that promotes the health and abundance of pollinating insects. Our team’s research spans multiple areas of weed and insect management, from taxonomic, demographic, and ecological questions addressing biological control and pollinator management efficacy to arthropod and pollinator community responses to grazing management, energy development, and plant invasions. We focus on weeds and insects in the Northern Great Plains, Intermountain West, and Pacific Northwest, and extend this research nationally across a range of habitats. We will develop monitoring strategies and tools to aid in evaluating the efficacy of management and impacts of disturbance, including the use of arthropods as bioindicators. We will address critical gaps in genotype-specific information for some of the most important invasive weeds in the U.S., thus guiding effective control methods including effective biological control. We will identify ecological and demographic factors limiting invasion potential for weeds targeted for biological control. We will evaluate pollinator health and arthropod communities as a measure of agroecosystem health. This will generate strategies to limit target weed spread and provide a general framework of biologically- and ecologically-based control methods and monitoring. This work develops science-based, economical weed and pollinator management that reduces costs, promotes food security and minimizes negative environmental impacts of traditional weed control. By communicating our results through on-going relationships with land management agencies, farmers and ranchers, academic societies, industry and state extension services, this research supports innovative strategies vital to the sustainability and health of U.S. agroecosystems.