One of the major assumptions of sustainable agriculture is that studying the ecology of insect pests in agroecosystems should lead to improved ecologically-based pest management. In the majority of studies, the geographic origin of the plants and insects are rarely considered. As a result, there has been little discussion as to whether species origins influence the success of pest control.
In this new commentary, I discuss how geography structures the evolution of insect as pests, and how this may influence the success of ecologically-based pest control approaches. I propose that further advances in developing ecologically-based management may come by developing a line of questioning that acknowledges both agricultural history and geography.
The article is freely available from Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene