Urban Insect Pest Management Program: Biology and Management of Select Pests in Texas Urban Environments
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abstract
There is increasing pressure from the public and regulatory agencies to provide more environmentally friendly means of managing urban insect pests. Newer insecticides with greater target specificity and non-chemical means of control are needed. Approaches using genetics and genomics hold great promise to answer basic questions about the biology of important pests and to identify new molecular targets for more effective management of pest species while minimizing the impact on the environment. The genomics era has opened up whole new avenues for research into potential new insecticide targets. Development of genomic resources and detailed studies of functional genomics for urban pest species are sorely needed. This project will address the need for more environmentally sound means of managing urban pests by understanding the biological attributes that make them so successful through state of the art of genetic approaches. We will focus on the attributes of invasive species, on sequencing the genome of some important urban pests, and on advancing our knowledge of thethe genetic basis of physiology, development and reproduction. This research should contribute to novel means of targetingimportant urban pest species and mitigating their effects on the public.
