Editorial: Areawide pest management and agroecosystem resilience to suppress invasive insects

Authors: BREWER, MICHAEL - Texas A&M University; Dorman, Seth

Submitted to: Frontiers in Insect Science
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/7/2025
Publication Date: 4/24/2025
Citation: Brewer, M., Dorman, S.J. 2025. Editorial: Areawide pest management and agroecosystem resilience to suppress invasive insects. Frontiers in Insect Science. https://doi.org/10.3389/finsc.2025.1605737.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/finsc.2025.1605737

Interpretive Summary: Areawide pest management emphasizes the use of pest management practices across a region with the intent to reduce or eliminate target pests broadly at regionally spatial scales. Areawide pest suppression is unlikely to be achieved when integrated pest management (IPM) practices are implemented at the field scale based on insect monitoring and use of economic thresholds in individual fields. Areawide suppression of pest populations reduces the likelihood and severity of reintroduction from source hosts (crop and non-crop). This concept is particularly applicable to invasive species that enter into an agroecosystem with attributes beneficial to pest biology and depauperate of suppression agents allowing invasive pests to flourish, resulting in substantial agricultural disruption over a large area. Further, an areawide approach may support IPM strategies by reducing the abundance of key pest populations at broader geographic scales thereby enabling the management of secondary pests with non-chemical approaches. This research topic extends this concept to address spatial variability of invasive as well as perennial pests and their suppression agents such as natural enemies. Traditionally, spatial and temporal variations of pest populations, including invasive species, have been documented along temperature gradients and among different crops and cultivars of a crop in the IPM literature, and through the action of natural enemies. An agroecosystem orientation for management of invasive species becomes more valuable when source-sink insect dynamics, insect movement, habitat affiliation, pest suppression agents, and crop sensitivity to the pest vary spatially across a crop production region. This variability is consistent with the viewpoint that pest and natural enemy abundance and species diversity are spatially variable and conditional on the range of agricultural and environmental conditions that themselves vary in the landscape. Overall, the goal of this research topic is to document examples of areawide pest management approaches to assess pest risk along with pest suppression that is naturally occurring in an agroecosystem and target insertion of areawide pest management practices that improve pest suppression.

Technical Abstract: This research topic contributes to the field of areawide pest management, with a focus on the assessment of pest risk and agroecosystem resilience to pests in the context of spatial variability of pest activity and natural pest suppression across an agroecosystem. The areawide pest management concept as initially put forward emphasizes the use of pest management practices across a region with the intent to reduce or eliminate target pests areawide. Areawide pest suppression is unlikely to be achieved when integrated pest management (IPM) practices are implemented at the field scale based on insect monitoring and use of economic thresholds in individual fields. Areawide suppression of pest populations reduces the likelihood and severity of reintroduction from source hosts (crop and non-crop). This concept is particularly applicable to invasive species that enter into an agroecosystem with attributes beneficial to pest biology and depauperate of suppression agents, resulting in substantial agricultural disruption over a large area. Further, an areawide approach may support IPM strategies by reducing the abundance of key pest populations at broader geographic scales thereby enabling the management of secondary pests with non-chemical approaches. This research topic extends this concept to address spatial variability of invasive as well as perennial pests and their suppression agents such as natural enemies. Traditionally, spatial and temporal variations of pest populations, including invasive species, have been documented along temperature gradients and among different crops and cultivars of a crop in the IPM literature, and through the action of natural enemies. More recently in the expanding agroecology literature, the influence of additional landscape elements on pests and natural enemies has been considered. An agroecosystem orientation for management of invasive species becomes more valuable when source-sink insect dynamics, insect movement, habitat affiliation, pest suppression agents, and crop sensitivity to the pest vary spatially across a crop production region. This variability is consistent with the viewpoint that pest and natural enemy abundance and species diversity are spatially variable and conditional on the range of agricultural (inclusive of crop genetics, crop field size and shape, and crop diversity) and environmental (inclusive of weather and climate, and local to regional semi-natural vegetative structure) conditions that themselves vary in the landscape. Overall, the goal of this research topic is to document examples of areawide pest management approaches to assess pest risk along with pest suppression that is naturally occurring in an agroecosystem and target insertion of areawide pest management practices that improve pest suppression.