Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture

Studies the history of natural historical investigations of insects in the light of the growing institutional organization of the agricultural sciences in the United States and Canada, exploring how this context has shaped the emergence of economic entomology and ecology.

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This study is facilitated by following economic entomologists' and ecologists' changing ideas about different pest control strategies, chiefly 'chemical', 'biological', and 'integrated' control. The author then follows the efforts of one specific group of entomologists, at the University of California, over three generations from their advocacy of 'biological' controls in the 1930s and 40s, through their shifting attention to the development of an 'integrated pest management' in the context of 'big biology' during the 1970s.