Side Effects of Insecticides on Leaf-Miners and Gall-Inducers Depend on Species Ecological Traits and Competition with Leaf-Chewers.

Internal feeding is considered to shield sessile herbivorous insects from exposure to nonsystemic insecticides aerially sprayed against forest defoliators, although this has not been tested. It is, however, established that leaf damage caused by defoliators affects the survivorship and oviposition behavior of sessile herbivores. Thus feeding ecology and competition may mediate nontarget effects of insecticides on these insects.

Assessing Insecticide Effects in Forests: A Tree-Level Approach Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Large-scale field studies on the ecological effects of aerial forest spraying often face methodological challenges, such as insufficient funding, difficult logistics, and legal obstacles. The resulting routine use of underpowered designs could lead to a systematic underestimation of insecticide effects on nontarget arthropod communities. We tested the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for experimental insecticide applications at tree level to increase replication in cost-efficient way.