Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
382 Sam Houston State University (142270)
Principal Investigator: Randle, Christopher P.
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 82,268
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): No
Start and End Dates: 8/1/22 - 7/31/23
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Biology
Department, Center, School, or Institute: Department of Biology
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: Predictive Modeling of Molluscan Pests
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
United States Department of Agriculture
CFDA Link: USDA
10.025
Program Title:
n/a
CFDA Linked: Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care
Note:
SAMs 1.1.1: Global climate change represents a threat to every sphere of human flourishing, including long- term food security. As climate patterns change, farmers will be forced to adapt their crop management practices to accommodate for the shifting landscape. A significant part of current agricultural effort and expenditure goes toward pest management, including the development of transgenic crops, the application of pesticides, tillage, and crop rotation. In modifying their approaches to crop management, farmers will need to anticipate changes in pest ranges driven by climate change. Gastropod pests (snails and slugs), represent an especially potent threat. Gastropod pests can 1) disperse quickly and broadly through human trade in agricultural and other commodities, 2) are often generalists that can survive in natural areas adjacent to farm fields, and 3) carry a suite of parasites that pose health threats to people. International think-tanks for agriculture and bioscience have identified pest species distribution modeling as one of the necessary approaches to preparing for climate change. In this project, we will employ both correlative models (ecological niche models, or ENMs) and mechanistic CLIMEX models to make 50-year predictions about the distribution of ca. 25 invasive gastropods identified by USDA-CAPS as priority pests. These predictions will take into account four different levels of climate change based on a realistic range of radiative forcings. This project represents the second year of effort to predict gastropod pest distributions in the US, building upon predictions under current climatic conditions generated in the first year of study.
Discussion: No discussion notes