PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 20: Disease in ecosystems: Reciprocal interactions between pathogens and ecosystems
Organizer(s): F Keesing, RS Ostfeld, and V Eviner
Tuesday, August 9, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 510b, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Applied biodiversity science: Managing emerging diseases in agriculture and linked natural systems using ecological principles.
Garrett, Karen1, 1 Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
ABSTRACT- Researchers working in agricultural systems have pioneered the study of plant community biodiversity effects on plant productivity and multi-trophic interactions. Biodiversity science is applied in the construction of mixtures of agricultural species and genotypes, with genotype mixtures becoming more common in mainstream agriculture as our ability to assemble mixtures with desired types of variability has increased. The use of rice genotype mixtures for management of rice blast has been a particularly successful application, and diversification methods are being adapted to the specific ecological characteristics of many host-pathogen systems. Likewise, biocontrol researchers now consider the utility of multiple species of biocontrol organisms for better coverage of environments important to pathogens. Diverse landscapes of agricultural and natural systems are also assembled, though with less intentionality, by communities of land managers. Commercial systems and unmanaged systems are often linked by pathogens that can infect species in both. For example, the sudden oak death pathogen infects both natural system hosts, such as oaks, and commercial plant species in the nursery trade, with different host species playing different epidemiologic roles. Its spread to new regions of the US is apparently due in large part to commercial movement of plants. Invasive plant species may also impact agricultural epidemics. For example, kudzu may play an important role as an additional host in the new epidemic of soybean rust in the USA. The combination of widespread soybean plantings and invasive kudzu stands may also have significant effects on native legumes susceptible to the soybean rust fungus. Management of emerging diseases will benefit from a combined strategy of both diluting susceptible host availability through small- and large-scale mixing with non-host genotypes and minimizing the availability of other host species that may help to complete pathogen life cycles.
Key words: disease, diversity, land use, agroecology