Abstract
The BIOCAT database of introductions of insect biological control agents for the control of insect pests was updated to the end of 2010 to include 6158 introductions, using 2384 different insect biological control agents against 588 pest species in 148 countries. Of the introductions, 2007 (32.6 %) led to establishment, and 620 (10.1 %) resulted in satisfactory control being reported against 172 (29.3 %) different pest species. The number of introductions has decreased each decade since the 1970s, but in the same period a higher proportion of introductions became established and contributed to successful control of target pests, and the number of countries implementing classical biological control increased. These positive trends reflect the greater research effort now made to optimize the chances of successful outcomes and increased confidence in classical biological control as a viable pest management strategy against a backdrop of a risk-averse culture that has developed in some key countries in recent years.
Highlights
Classical biological control (CBC, not to be confused with conservation biological control) of alien insect pests by the deliberate introduction of insect natural enemies continues to be a powerful pest management tool, especially that invasive insect pests along with other pest species are on the increase through global trade and travel (Bebber et al 2014)
Geopolitical changes have caused some problems, e.g. the sourcing or releasing of biological control agents (BCAs) from or into what was known as the USSR, Yugoslavia (‘former Yugoslavia’), pre-independence India, etc. and as far as possible these have been updated to current political countries, but in some cases we have had to keep the old terms
Introductions have risen by nearly 20 %, the number of targets by over 8 %, the number of agents employed
Summary
Classical biological control (CBC, not to be confused with conservation biological control) of alien insect pests by the deliberate introduction of insect natural enemies continues to be a powerful pest management tool, especially that invasive insect pests along with other pest species are on the increase through global trade and travel (Bebber et al 2014). BIOCAT is a database documenting all deliberate introductions of insects for the biological control of other insects since the 1890s. It was developed and compiled by the late David J. Former Director of the International Institute of Biological Control ( integrated into CABI) with the help of his wife, Annette H. J. Greathead continued to update the database until his untimely death in 2006 (Murphy and Cock 2007). We do not have the definitive version of BIOCAT used for Greathead and Greathead (1992), only the updated live version that D.J. Greathead worked on. This prevents us from checking and recreating the numbers in Greathead and Greathead (1992) to confirm how they were derived
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