Managing agricultural pests with an incomplete understanding of the impacts that tactics have on crops, pests, and other organisms poses risks for loss of short-term profits and longer-term negative impacts, such as evolved resistance and nontarget effects. This is especially relevant for the management of weeds that are viewed almost exclusively as major impediments to crop production. Seldom considered in weed management are the benefits weeds provide in agroecosystems, which should be considered for optimal decision-making. Integration of weed costs and benefits will become increasingly important as management for pests transitions away from nearly complete reliance on herbicides and transgenic crop traits as the predominant approach for control. Here, we introduce a weed-management decision framework that accounts for weed benefits and exemplify how in-crop weed occurrence can increase crop yields in which a highly damaging insect also occurs. We highlight a case study showing how management decision-making for common milkweed, which is currently controlled primarily with glyphosate in herbicide-tolerant corn, can be improved by integrating management of the European corn borer (ECB), which is currently controlled primarily by the transgenic toxin Cry1 in Bacillus thuringiensis corn. Our data reveal that milkweed plants harboring aphids provide a food source (honeydew) for parasitoid wasps, which attack ECB eggs. Especially at high ECB population densities (> 1 egg mass leaf–1), maintaining low milkweed densities (< 1 stem m–2), effectively helps to minimize yield losses from ECB and to increase the economic injury level of this aggressive perennial weed. In addition, milkweed is the host for the monarch butterfly, so breeding-ground occurrences of the plant, including crop fields, may help sustain populations of this iconic insect. Using a more-holistic approach to integrate the management of multiple crop pests has the capacity to improve decision-making at the field scale, which can improve outcomes at the landscape scale.

Indaziflam is a cellulose biosynthesis-inhibiting herbicide for annual weed control in various agricultural systems. Sporadic cases of unacceptable injury to desirable plants have been reported after indaziflam application, which may have been due to conditions favoring increased indaziflam–soil bioavailability. Research was conducted from 2013 to 2015 on a sandy soil to elucidate the effects of soil organic matter content (SOMC) and soil volumetric water content (SVWC) on indaziflam–soil bioavailability. Indaziflam was applied (50 or 100 g ha–1) at fall only, fall plus spring, and spring only timings to plots in a factorial arrangement of SOMC, pre–indaziflam application (PrIA) SVWC, and post–indaziflam application (PoIA) SVWC. After application, field soil cores were collected for a subsequent greenhouse bioassay experiment, where foliage mass reduction of perennial ryegrass seeded from 0 to 15 cm soil depth was used as an indicator of indaziflam–soil bioavailability throughout the profile. Significant edaphic effects were observed at 0 to 2.5, 2.5 to 5, and 5 to 7.5 cm depths, with increased bioavailability at low compared with high SOMC. Pre–indaziflam application SVWC did not affect bioavailability, whereas PoIA high SVWC increased indaziflam–soil bioavailability at 2.5 to 7.5 cm depth compared with PoIA low SVWC. Low SOMC–PoIA high SVWC decreased perennial ryegrass foliage mass 40 and 37% at 5 to 7.5 cm depth from cores collected 10 and 14 wk after treatment, respectively, whereas reductions from all other SOMC–PoIA SVWC combinations were < 12% and did not vary from each other. Pearson's correlation coefficients showed a moderate, positive relationship between perennial ryegrass mass reductions at 0 to 2.5, 2.5 to 5, 0 to 5, and 0 to 10 cm depths and hybrid bermudagrass cover reduction, which suggests conditions favoring increased indaziflam–soil bioavailability can adversely affect plant growth. Data from this research will aid land managers to use indaziflam effectively without adversely affecting growth of desirable species.

Olive production in the southeastern United States has recently begun to increase from demand for locally produced virgin olive oil. With no established commercial production as a reference, information about the effects of indaziflam residual herbicide on newly established trees was evaluated over time for up to 3 yr on loamy sand soils. Multiple spring and autumn applications of indaziflam at different rates were applied to the same newly planted or 1-yr-old olive trees in different experiments in consecutive years. Visual injury, height, and caliper diameter measures were taken monthly during the growing season up to six times. Regression analysis of treatments over time indicated no differences in olive tree growth for plots treated with indaziflam at 38, 75, or 150 g ai ha–1 up to five times in 3 yr, compared with nontreated controls. This information will be beneficial as olive growers seek viable weed control options when establishing new groves in the region.

The rise of on-line open access (OA) has profound implications for academic publishing, not least the shift from subscribers to authors as the primary transactional partners for peer-reviewed journals. Although OA offers many benefits, it also paves the way for predatory publishers, who exploit the author-as-customer model to obtain revenue from author fees while providing few of the editorial services associated with academic publishing. Predatory journals publish papers with little or no peer review, and often disguise their real geographical location while exaggerating their scope and editorial expertise. Such journals also attempt to attract authors by promising unrealistically rapid editorial decisions while falsely claiming peer review, and fabricating impact factors and inclusion in academic indexes. The explosive increase in predatory OA journals is not only a risk to inexperienced authors, but also threatens to undermine the OA model and the legitimate communication of research.