The Red Queen in a potato field: integrated pest management versus chemical dependency in Colorado potato beetle control.

Originally designed to reconcile insecticide applications with biological control, the concept of integrated pest management (IPM) developed into the systems-based judicious and coordinated use of multiple control techniques aimed at reducing pest damage to economically tolerable levels. Chemical control, with scheduled treatments, was the starting point for most management systems in the 1950s. Although chemical control is philosophically compatible with IPM practices as a whole, reduction in pesticide use has been historically one of the main goals of IPM practitioners.