Download or read book Plant-insect Interactions to Promote Pest Management in Strawberry and Water Hyacinth Ecosystems written by Emily Nicole Bick and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes work pertaining to plant-insect interactions to promote pest management in the strawberry and water hyacinth ecosystems. Specifically, the first chapter examines the relationship between the bottom-up effects of salinity and nutrients on water hyacinth and its biological control agent Neochetina bruchi. The second chapter describes the development of a novel insect sampling device. The third chapter gathered data that allowed the testing of two competing but not mutually exclusive explanations for how alfalfa might enhance control of Lygus spp. on strawberries, one based on alfalfa acting as a trap crop and one based on alfalfa enhancing the densities of natural enemies. The results support the natural enemy hypothesis but not the trap crop hypothesis.