Contact
Matthias Becker (
xmb@sim.uni-hannover.de)
Kin-Woon Yeow (
kinwoon@sim.uni-hannover.de)
Problem Statement
In the field of agriculture, crops harvesting is always dependent towards control of herbivorous
insects in certain regulated environment. Correspondingly, an efficient control of herbivorous insects
is required by the agricultural industry for the sake of maximizing the agricultural products
or crops.
Investigation
Concern over declining biodiversity and the implications for continued provision of ecosystem services
has led towards intensive research effort to describe relationships between biodiversity and
ecosystem functioning. Here we extend this effort to the relationship between natural enemy
species diversity and natural pest control. From simple modeled food-webs and simulations of
natural enemy species loss we derive specific predictions concerning the effect of herbivore lifehistory
traits, such as life-cycle type and variance (reflecting species composition effects) of the
relationship between natural enemy diversity and pest-control.
Solution
A predictive-based simulation system is created for the purpose of stochastic simulation of a greenhouse
with several containers (crops). The predictive simulation system constructed is able to mimic
the biodiversity of the greenhouse with a high degree of accuracy.
References
L. Hemerik, and E. H. Nes. Predicting the potential establishment of two insect species using
the simulation environment insim (insect simulation). Entomologia Experimentaliset Applicata,
159(2):222–229, 2016.
M. Wubs, R. Böckmann, R. Meyhöfer, and L. Hemerik. Modelling development of the whitefly
triakeurodes vaporariorum for a decision-support-system. In Proceedings of the Netherlands Entomological
Society meeting, volume 25, 2014.
