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Pesticide dosing must be guided by ecological principles

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 1575–1577 (2020)Cite this article

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Insecticide use could be reduced if dose recommendations move from a toxicological perspective (how much is needed to kill an insect pest) to an ecological perspective (how much is needed to protect a crop).

Insect populations are in sharp decline, with potentially catastrophic consequences for ecosystem function1. This is a complex problem, but the widespread use of pesticides is certainly part of it2,3. Debates continue about whether some insecticides should be banned, but where bans have happened different insecticides have been substituted. These may be no less harmful to insects4. Agriculture needs to move away from such a heavy reliance on pesticides and adopt an integrated pest management (IPM) approach5 and a better regulatory process6, but this change will take time with the IPM approaches proposed to date. Here we argue that we could immediately reduce the amounts of insecticide applied to the environment without necessarily risking loss of crop yields if we rethink pesticide dosing recommendations based on ecological principles. This action alone will not solve the pesticide problem, but will reduce pesticide pollution to win time while we transition to a more sustainable agricultural model.

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Fig. 1: Examples of dose–response mortality curves for insects.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. J. F. Brown for useful comments on the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Théotime Colin

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Théotime Colin, Coline Monchanin & Andrew B. Barron

  3. Research Center on Animal Cognition (CRCA), Center for Integrative Biology (CBI); CNRS, University Paul Sabatier – Toulouse III, Toulouse, France

    Coline Monchanin & Mathieu Lihoreau

Authors
  1. Théotime Colin
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  2. Coline Monchanin
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  3. Mathieu Lihoreau
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  4. Andrew B. Barron
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Correspondence to Andrew B. Barron.

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Colin, T., Monchanin, C., Lihoreau, M. et al. Pesticide dosing must be guided by ecological principles. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1575–1577 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01302-1

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