Assessing indirect impacts of biological control agents on native biodiversity: a community-level approach

摘要

The safety of biological control methods is a subject that has received considerable attention for a long time. However, apparent competition (competition due to shared natural enemies) has been neglected when considering possible impacts of biological control agents. One of the reasons for the lack of studies in this area is the difficulty in assessing and predicting indirect effects due to apparent competition. In this paper we outline a methodology to predict and measure non-target impacts of biological control agents due to apparent competition.