RE: Insect Studies: Do Researchers Have an Obligation to Their Subjects?

The fight against insects is never easy because they attack in large quantities, for industries it is much easier to sell very powerful chemicals to kill them, probably a slow and agonizing death for insects.

On the other hand, I am an agronomist engineer and my area is agricultural entomology, so I receive very often questions from acquaintances asking me for help to eliminate some arthropods that damage their plants, it is always necessary to see the affected place because sometimes the problem is not insects or other arthropods, there are also diseases, deficiencies or microorganisms that damage plants, but due to ignorance of many people usually blame insects for everything. In general, whenever I find insects damaging plants I try to implement more natural methods of control, for example, the use of their natural enemies for them to control them (biological control), I think this would be the least harmful method because it seeks to replicate what would originally occur within an ecosystem, sometimes plants when eaten by pests release compounds into the air to attract predators of pests that attack them. Also "trap crops" are often used, this means that very close to a cultivated area, places are selected to grow other attractive plants so that pests are interested in these and not in the crops from which we will obtain some benefit.

There are many methods and techniques that can be used, but I believe that none of them guarantees a quick death of insects 😞, but perhaps more respectful. Glue traps are more useful to collect specimens and thus know which are the most abundant in the area where the traps are placed, so you can create strategies to avoid possible pest attacks. Insects and other arthropods are part of the most attacked living beings on the planet, they are prey or food source of many forms of life, so evolutionarily they have great qualities to continue living, for example: camouflage, adaptation, poisons and a very high reproductive rate, a single female can bring hundreds of offspring into the world. Sorry for responding very late, but I'm back and hope to be able to comment more often and contribute more posts continuously, a hug @agmoore. 🙂🙂