Mission

The mission of my research program is to provide regional, national and international leadership on biological and ecological studies of insects that impact vegetable crops and to utilize this scholarly information for developing or refining innovative pest management and crop production strategies that will benefit the user, environment and the consumer. There are two programmatic goals. The first is to produce scholarly contributions in insect ecology as it pertains to pests that attack and transmit pathogens to vegetable crops. The second is to make significant advancements in vegetable crop production by developing management strategies for insect pests and the pathogens they transmit to vegetable crops. Both goals are influenced by agricultural ecosystems typical of the Great Lakes region.

Goals

1. Study the biology and ecology of insects that impact vegetable crop production. Insects that either attack or benefit vegetable crops typically utilize habitats outside of vegetable fields and move among crops and habitats during the season. The surrounding local and landscape factors likely affect the location, intensity and dynamics of an insect’s abundance within a vegetable crop. These surrounding landscape features also may harbor sources of pathogens that insect vectors move into vegetable crops. For these reasons, this goal requires a landscape-level perspective for studying insect ecology and the epidemiology of pathogens that insects transmit to vegetable crops. In particular, I have been most interested in describing temporal and spatial patterns of insect pest dispersal within various vegetable cropping systems.
2. Develop pest management practices that improve vegetable crop production. This goal focuses on developing management practices for vegetable insect pests and pathogens they transmit to vegetable crops. Multiple insect pest management practices have been explored including the use of novel insecticides, cultural controls, biological control and insect-resistant crops. Additionally, work has been done to optimize timing insecticide applications and strategies for using insecticides that should mitigate the development of insecticide resistance.

Approach

An overarching approach to accomplishing both goals is to establish intra- and inter-disciplinary collaborations with scientists at Cornell, at other universities, and in private industry. Because my strengths are in insect ecology and vegetable entomology, I have sought the knowledge and skills of other researchers and specialists to complement my strengths to solve problems of mutual interest. Equally as important, other scientists have sought my expertise to complement their programs.