Biological control of insect pests.

Isozyme techniques have proven particularly useful in the past in the field of biological insect control. In this brief review I have tried to give a small selection of the varied approaches that have been used. In the future, isozyme analysis will undoubtedly play a major role. But genetic analyses, as exemplified by the use of isozymes, form but a small part of the knowledge we must have if biological control programs are to be successful. In a pest management program where one is using both chemical and biological methods it is necessary to know a great deal about the biology of the pests, their parasites, predators, and host plants or animals, together with a knowledge of the general ecology of the area where the problem exists. Too often, major control programs have been started with pitifully inadequate basic knowledge of the insect pest concerned, dooming such projects to a series of frantic and generally makeshift attempts to redeem these inadequacies. We are starting to see a much greater emphasis on interrelationships between scientific disciplines, more basic research being conducted, and a resurgence of interaction between those people who are in the applied field and those in the basic sciences. This dialog must be continued. In closing, I want to emphasize again that in pest control we are involved in the management of a coexistence with insects and I think it appropriate to end with the thoughts of W.J. Holland [1949]: when all cities shall have been long dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antenna in the glow of the worn-out sun, representing the sole survival of animal life on this our earth--a melancholy 'bug'.