Dynamics of Forest Insect Populations: Patterns, Causes, Implications / Edition 1

by Alan A. Berryman

Overview

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 environments 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 population 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306427459
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	07/31/1988
Series:	Population Ecology
Edition description:	1988
Pages:	604
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.05(d)

Table of Contents

1: The Larch Cone Fly in the French Alps.- 2: The Larch Gall Midge in Seed Orchards of South Siberia.- 3: The Armored Scales of Hemlock.- 4: The Beech Scale.- 5: The Balsam Woolly Adelgid in North America.- 6: The Large Pine Aphid on Scots Pine in Britain.- 7: The White Lace Lerp in Southeastern Australia.- 8: The Nantucket Pine Tip Moth.- 9: The Autumnal Moth in Fennoscandia.- 10: The Douglas-Fir Tussock Moth in the Interior Pacific Northwest.- 11: The Nun Moth in European Spruce Forests.- 12: The Larch Casebearer in the Intermountain Northwest.- 13: The Pine Beauty in Scottish Lodgepole Pine Plantations.- 14: The Teak Defoliator in Kerala, India.- 15: The Pine Looper in Britain and Europe.- 16: The Spruce Budworm in Eastern North America.- 17: The Larch Budmoth in the Alps.- 18: The Gypsy Moth: A Westward Migrant.- 19: The Pine Sawfly in Central France.- 20: Sirex in Australasia.- 21: The Japanese Pine Sawyer.- 22: The Greater European Spruce Beetle.- 23: The Spruce Bark Beetle of Eurasia.- 24: The Mountain Pine Beetle in Western North America.- 25: The Southern Pine Beetle.- 26: The Fir Engraver Beetle in Western States.- 27: The Striped Ambrosia Beetle.- Taxonomic Index.