Almeida-Gomes, M. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2023

Turning Ecology Against Pesticide Resistance: Exploiting Competition in Pest Populations Through Pesticide Use

Modern agriculture relies on effective pesticides for pest control, but this efficacy is threatened by the evolution of resistance. Although pesticides are novel compounds, pests can quickly develop resistance. Inspired by medical research, we propose an ecologically inspired pest management paradigm that uses pesticides to leverage competitive interactions between pesticide-sensitive and resistant pests. This approach involves reactive pesticide use, monitoring pest responses, and maintaining pest populations below economic injury levels while limiting resistant individuals proliferation. A mathematical model shows that managing pests abundance at critical levels, rather than aiming for eradication, delays resistant-pest dominance. By reducing resistant individuals growth rates and maximizing pesticide-sensitive populations, resistance spread can be hampered. Our findings suggest proactive, ecological, and evolutionary-informed pest management to address threats to food production. This study also highlights opportunities for further research into the ecological aspects of pesticide resistance.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

High species turnover shapes anuran community composition in ponds along an urban-rural gradient

The rapid expansion of urban areas in which natural and semi-natural areas are replaced by human infrastructure, such as buildings and streets, is a major threat to biodiversity worldwide. However, little is known about how the structure of biotic communities is affected by urbanization in the tropics. Here, we tested the effect of land use types in urban and peri-urban areas on frog species richness and community composition in central Brazil. We selected 20 ponds differing in size and surrounding levels of urbanization as well as natural forest cover. We then used a Poisson GLM and a distance-based Redundancy Analysis (db-RDA) to relate species richness and community composition, respectively, to environmental variables. Variation in species richness was best explained by pond size (positive effect) and amount of urbanization (negative effect) in the surrounding 500 m. Community composition was mainly driven by species turnover than by nestedness, with db-RDA showing that turnover was explained primarily by urban infrastructure and forest cover. Our results indicate that urbanization negatively influences species richness. Moreover, as the amount of urbanization increased, several species were replaced by others taxa that appear better adapted to urban environments. Our results indicate that maintaining large ponds with surrounding native vegetation in urban environments might be an effective strategy for conserving frog communities.

ecology↗