Introduction

In this chapter the major conclusions from the preceding chapters are linked, to illustrate the advantages of a generalist approach to the interaction between insect ecology and pest management. In general, a much narrower view tends to be prosecuted today, often indirectly through research programmes being artificially constrained by short-term productivity demands and bureaucratic impositions on the one hand, and technocratic leanings in researchers on the other. Two themes especially relevant to the future of insect ecology research for pest management purposes are developed from this synopsis.

The first theme is developed to support the proposition that effective pest management is going to rely on the appropriate use of strong scientific principles. Unfortunately we live in times when the advantages of logic and scientific principles are being sacrificed, with the ‘shift from the modernist culture that reified the liberating power of science to a culture of so-called post-modernism – a post 1960's culture that has shrugged off the emancipatory certainties of science and erected commercial marketplace values and pluralistic images in its stead’ (Hill & Turpin, 1994).