Insects are awesome! With that, I need say nothing else, but I will. As I have not posted in some time, and there are many things happening with me, I thought I better compose an update.
I have started my Masters of Pest Management degree at Simon Fraser University and it is interesting. In more ways than one…
I am finding school very challenging. I am in two classes, and there is a lot of homework that arises from there. In addition, I am supposed to be reading everything that has ever been written about cutworms, entomopathogens and biological control.
That last sentence may need some further explanation, so let me elaborate.
Pest management is a pretty simple concept. We humans grow a lot of different crops, and those crops are tasty, easy to digest and good sources of energy and nutrients. Unfortunately that makes these crops equally appealing to a wide array of insect herbivores (plant eaters). Pest management the study of controlling those “pests” while still maintaining low production costs and environmental impact.
Biological control uses living organisms to control the pest populations rather than chemical pesticides. Not only is this (usually) more eco-friendly, but as the control agent is living, it can become established in the environment and persist in its control activities. Thus pest management is really just applied population ecology (duh…).
‘Entomopathogen’ is just a fancy term meaning insect disease. There are several groups of entomopathogens that are used or studied as agents for biological control: fungi, nematodes, viruses and bacteria. There is another type of biological control – classical – but I will discuss that more in another post.
My specific research will concentrate on controlling a pest of wine grape plants, called a cutworm. Those of you who are vegetable gardeners may be familiar with this group of pests. They are the larvae (insect babies) of a group of moths (Noctudiae for those of you who like the latin) and they chomp plant stems. I will be searching for biological controls in order to limit their populations in vineyards.
So the masters has started… Whether I survive it or not remains to be seen. Needless to say (why do we always state ‘needless to say’ and then go on to say something?) this will be a challenging time in my life.
Scott
