Biogeochemical and Ecological Analysis of the Population Dynamics of the Spotted Ladybird Beetle Using Geographic Information Systems and Naturally Occurring Isotopes

早在 1962 年，雷切尔·卡森 (Rachel Carson) 就认识到需要用生物方法解决环境问题。 她说：“对于化学防治昆虫来说，确实有各种各样的替代品。有些已经在使用……其他的只不过是富有想象力的科学家头脑中的想法……。所有这些都有一个共同点：它们都是生物解决方案，基于他们希望控制的生物体，以及这些生物体所属的整个生命结构。该研究项目将在此背景下开发杀虫剂和除草剂的天然替代品，作为农田管理工具。我们研究的长期目标是了解以害虫为食的昆虫的行为，这些害虫会降低农作物的生产力。这些知识可以让我们通过设计促进大量捕食者的农业景观来自然地减少害虫的数量。这是通过确定不同作物类型和捕食性昆虫之间的联系来实现的。未来的一步是将捕食者的空间分布与景观元素联系起来。这两个步骤是研究昆虫行为的独特方法，因为它们结合了地质学和化学（自然存在的稳定同位素分析）、昆虫学（昆虫种群动态、生物控制）和地理学（使用地理信息系统进行景观测绘）的技术。

As early as 1962 Rachel Carson recognized the need for biological solutions to environmental problems. She said: "A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is available. Some are already in use... others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative scientists,... . All have this in common: they are biological solutions, based on the living organism they wish to control, and to the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong. This research project will work within this context to develop natural alternatives to pesticide and herbicides as crop-land management tools. The long-term goal of our research is to understand the behavior of insects that ate natural predators on pests that reduce the productivity of agricultural crops. We will identify attributes of the landscape that are favored by a predator on aphids, the ladybird beetles. This knowledge could allow us to naturally reduce the number of insect pests by designing an agricultural landscape that promotes a large population of predators. The first step in this research is to define the link between various crop types and the predatory insect. This is done by determining if there is a match between the abundance of naturally occurring stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the insect predators and the agricultural crop. A future step will be to link the spatial distribution of the predators with respect to landscape elements. These two steps are a unique approach to studying the behavior of insects because they combine technology from geology and chemistry (analysis of naturally occurring stable isotopes), entomology (insect population dynamics, biological control), and geography (landscape mapping using geographical information systems).