Symposium: Strategy and Tactics of Insect Control: Perspectives on Insect Control

Abstract

During the past 100 years, insect control has been a predominant objective and influence on the development of entomology in Canada. Preoccupation with the insecticide method of insect control threatened for a while to divert entomologists from the biological bases of their science. But the scientific questions and practical problems raised by insecticides have recently generated a renaissance of biological thinking about insects and ways to control them. Older biological methods and certain promising new ones are receiving increased attention. Insecticides have won a permanent place in our arsenal but we can no longer continue to rely so heavily on this one weapon. A new perspective is emerging in which strategies of insect control will be formulated on the basis of population dynamics studies and will involve assembling from a variety of control methods the appropriate combinations to meet particular problems. The requirements of these combined strategies will impinge increasingly on economic and social affairs which, in turn, will modify the technology of insect control.