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Pesticide dosing must be guided by ecological principles

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 1575–1577 (2020)Cite this article

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Insecticide use could be reduced if dose recommendations move from a toxicological perspective (how much is needed to kill an insect pest) to an ecological perspective (how much is needed to protect a crop).

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Fig. 1: Examples of dose–response mortality curves for insects.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. J. F. Brown for useful comments on the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Théotime Colin

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Théotime Colin, Coline Monchanin & Andrew B. Barron

  3. Research Center on Animal Cognition (CRCA), Center for Integrative Biology (CBI); CNRS, University Paul Sabatier – Toulouse III, Toulouse, France

    Coline Monchanin & Mathieu Lihoreau

Authors
  1. Théotime Colin
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  2. Coline Monchanin
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  3. Mathieu Lihoreau
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  4. Andrew B. Barron
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew B. Barron.

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Colin, T., Monchanin, C., Lihoreau, M. et al. Pesticide dosing must be guided by ecological principles. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 1575–1577 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01302-1

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