This new approach to insect modeling discusses population dynamics' regularities, control theory, theory of transitions, and describes methods of population dynamics and outbreaks modeling for forest phyllophagous insects and their effects on global climate change. Research in insect population dynamics is important for more reasons than just protecting forest communities. Insect populations are among the main ecological units included in the analysis of stability of ecological systems. Moreover, it is convenient to test new methods of analyzing population and community stability on the insect-related data, as by now ecologists and entomologists have accumulated large amounts of such data. In this book, the authors analyze population dynamics of quite a narrow group of insects – forest defoliators. It is hoped that the methods proposed herein for the analysis of population dynamics of these species may be useful and effective for analyzing population dynamics of other animal species and their effects and role in global warming. What can insects tell us about our environment and our ever-changing climate? It is through studies like this one that these important answers can be obtained, along with data on the insects and their behaviors themselves. The authors present new theories on modeling and data accumulation, using cutting-edge processes never before published for such a wide audience. This volume presents the state-of-the-art in the science, and it is an essential piece of any entomologist's and forest engineer's library.

The abundance of insects can change dramatically from generation to generation; these generational changes may occur within a growing season or over a period of years. Such extraordinary density changes or "outbreaks" may be abrupt and ostensibly random, or population peaks may occur in a more or less cyclic fashion. They can be hugely destructive when the insect is a crop pest or carries diseases of humans, farm animals, or wildlife. Knowledge of these types of population dynamics and computer models that may help predict when they occur are very important. This important new book revisits a subject not thoroughly discussed in such a publication since 1988 and brings an international scale to the issue of insect outbreaks. Insect Outbreaks Revisited is intended for senior undergraduate and graduate students in ecology, population biology and entomology, as well as government and industry scientists doing research on pests, land managers, pest management personnel, extension personnel, conservation biologists and ecologists, and state, county and district foresters.

Insects multiply. Destruction reigns. There is dismay, followed by outcry, and demands to Authority. Authority remembers its experts or appoints some: they ought to know. The experts advise a Cure. The Cure can be almost anything: holy water from Mecca, a Government Commis sion, a culture of bacteria, poison, prayers denunciatory or tactful, a new god, a trap, a Pied Piper. The Cures have only one thing in common: with a little patience they always work. They have never been known entirely to fail. Likewise they have never been known to prevent the next outbreak. For the cycle of abundance and scarcity has a rhythm of its own, and the Cures are applied just when the plague of insects is going to abate through its own loss of momentum. -Abridged, with insects in place of voles, from C. Elton, 1924, Voles, Mice and Lemmings, with permission of Oxford University Press This book is an enquiry into the "natural rhythms" of insect abundance in forested ecosystems and into the forces that give rise to these rhythms. Forests form unique environ ments for such studies because one can find them growing under relatively natural (pri meval) conditions as well as under the domination of human actions. Also, the slow growth and turnover rates of forested ecosystems enable us to investigate insect popula tion dynamics in a plant environment that remains relatively constant or changes only slowly, this in contrast to agricultural systems, where change is often drastic and frequent.

Bark Beetle Management, Ecology, and Climate Change provides the most updated and comprehensive knowledge on the complex effects of global warming upon the economically and ecologically important bark beetle species and their host trees. This authoritative reference synthesizes information on how forest disturbances and environmental changes due to current and future climate changes alter the ecology and management of bark beetles in forested landscapes. Written by international experts on bark beetle ecology, this book covers topics ranging from changes in bark beetle distributions and addition of novel hosts due to climate change, interactions of insects with altered host physiology and disturbance regimes, ecosystem-level impacts of bark beetle outbreaks due to climate change, multi-trophic changes mediated via climate change, and management of bark beetles in altered forests and climate conditions. Bark Beetle Management, Ecology, and Climate Change is an important resource for entomologists, as well as forest health specialists, policy makers, and conservationists who are interested in multi-faceted impacts of climate change on forest insects at the organismal, population, and community-levels. The only book that addresses the impacts of global warming on bark beetles with feedback loops to forest patterns and processes Discusses altered disturbance regimes due to climate change with implications for bark beetles and associated organisms Led by a team of editors whose expertise includes entomology, pathology, ecology, forestry, modeling, and tree physiology

FROM THE PREFACE: The abundance of insects can change dramatically from generation to generation; these generational changes may occur within a growing season or over a period of years. Such extraordinary density changes or "outbreaks" may be abrupt and ostensibly random, or population peaks may occur in a more or less cyclic fashion....The goal of this book is to update and advance current thinking on the phenomenon of insect outbreaks. The contributors have reviewed relevant literature in order to generate a synthesis providing new concepts and important alternatives for future research. More importantly, they have presented new ideas or syntheses that will stimulate advances in thinking and experimentation.

This new approach to insect modeling discusses population dynamics' regularities, control theory, theory of transitions, and describes methods of population dynamics and outbreaks modeling for forest phyllophagous insects and their effects on global climate change. Research in insect population dynamics is important for more reasons than just protecting forest communities. Insect populations are among the main ecological units included in the analysis of stability of ecological systems. Moreover, it is convenient to test new methods of analyzing population and community stability on the insect-related data, as by now ecologists and entomologists have accumulated large amounts of such data. In this book, the authors analyze population dynamics of quite a narrow group of insects – forest defoliators. It is hoped that the methods proposed herein for the analysis of population dynamics of these species may be useful and effective for analyzing population dynamics of other animal species and their effects and role in global warming. What can insects tell us about our environment and our ever-changing climate? It is through studies like this one that these important answers can be obtained, along with data on the insects and their behaviors themselves. The authors present new theories on modeling and data accumulation, using cutting-edge processes never before published for such a wide audience. This volume presents the state-of-the-art in the science, and it is an essential piece of any entomologist's and forest engineer's library.