QEIB. Theory and Experimentation with a Powerful Trophic Cascade: Nematodes, Rootfeeders, and Bush Lupine.

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AbstractKnowledge about the spread of diseases is vitally important to health, agriculture, and to natural communities of organisms. We propose to experiment with an insect disease that offers great potential for learning general principles of spread. We will work with entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) that kill caterpillars that eat the roots of plants. These nematodes can protect the plants by killing root feeding caterpillars. Our preliminary mathematical models lead us to propose that the EPN population is caught between the point of extinction due to overexploitation and a the point of extinction due to underexploitation Finding the biological factors that create the area between over exploitation and underexploitation is the major objective of this project. The spread and dispersal of the EPN among lupine bushes is central to the area of over and underexploitation biology. Immigrants can rescue EPN populations that have or are headed for extinction. The field experiments are designed to answer questions about the conditions that lead to stability of the EPN population EPNs are among the most important natural enemies of root feeding insects in both cultivated and natural settings and are of substantial interest to agriculture and management