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·卡森就认识到用生物方法解决环境问题的必要性。她说：“化学防治昆虫的替代品种类之多，实属罕见。有些已经在使用了..。其他的只是富有想象力的科学家头脑中的想法……它们都有一个共同点：它们都是生物解决方案，基于它们希望控制的活着的有机体，以及这些有机体所属的整个生命结构。这一研究项目将在这一背景下努力开发农药和除草剂的天然替代品，作为作物-土地管理工具。我们研究的长期目标是了解以天敌为食的昆虫对降低农作物产量的害虫的行为。我们将确定哪些景观属性是蚜虫上的捕食者--瓢虫--所青睐的。这一知识可以让我们通过设计一种促进捕食者大量繁殖的农业景观来自然减少害虫的数量。这项研究的第一步是确定各种作物类型与捕食性昆虫之间的联系。这是通过确定捕食性昆虫和农作物中自然产生的稳定碳和氮同位素的丰度是否匹配来完成的。未来的步骤将是将捕食者的空间分布与景观要素联系起来。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(分析自然产生的稳定同位素)、昆虫学(昆虫种群动态、生物控制)和地理学(使用地理信息系统绘制景观图)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).