Diversity in agricultural and forest entomology

Abstract

2006 was an important year for Agricultural and Forest Entomology. Since being listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge for four years, we obtained our first Impact Factor, which, at 1.533, put Agricultural and Forest Entomology in the top 10 entomological journals. In the last four years we have published 150 papers, written by 449 authors, covering a wide variety of topics on agricultural and forest entomology. Papers have discussed important pests such as the Colorado potato beetle Leptinotarsa decemlineata and the large pine weevil Hylobius abietis, natural enemies such as the predatory mites of the apple-grass aphid Rhopalosiphum insertum and the entomopathogenic nematodes of the cabbage root fly Delia radicum, options for managing pests, including trap cropping and floral understoreys, the implications of climate change, organic farming and many other topics. For the last five years, the Royal Entomological Society journals have been awarding prizes for the best papers published over a two-year period. The paper awarded the Agricultural and Forest Entomology prize for 2002–3 was by Dirk Babendreier et al. (2003) who considered the risk posed by the inundative release of Trichogramma brassicae to nontarget insects in meadows, flower strips and hedgerows. The paper awarded the prize for 2005–6 was by Zhang & Schlyter (2004) who studied the effect of nonhost volatiles on conifer-inhabiting bark beetles. The authors proposed a semiochemical-diversity hypothesis, based on the inhibitory effect of nonhost volatiles on host location by bark beetles. They suggested that this could contribute to the lower frequency of outbreaks of forest insects in mixed forests. In providing support for the more general ‘stability-diversity hypothesis’, this paper has much wider relevance. Agricultural and Forest Entomology will continue to publish a wide on a wide range of entomological topics, including, in this issue, papers on the impact of dead wood on saproxylic insects, bacteria associated with grape phylloxera, methods for studying root-feeding insects, the effect of forest design on sawflies, gypsy moth mating disruption, and the effect of farm diversity on leaf-cutting ants. Agricultural and Forest Entomology was established because of the view that agricultural entomology and forest entomology have much in common. This issue provides good examples of this perspective. The effects of diversity on the pests and other insects found in farms and forests are closely related topics. Root-feeding insects pose problems for both agriculture and forestry and looking back over previous issues we can see, for example, that research reported in this issue on the disruption of gypsy moth mating is related to work on scarabids (Wenninger & Averill, 2006), pine sawflies (Lyytikainen-Saarenmaa et al., 2006), codling moth (Yang et al., 2005) and grape berry moth (Trimble et al., 2003). We look forward to many more years of diversity in agricultural and forest entomology.