Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampricide. The most common of these are herbicides, which account for approximately 50% of all pesticide use globally. Most pesticides are intended to serve as plant protection products, which in general, protect plants from weeds, fungi, or insects. As an example, the fungus Alternaria solani is used to combat the aquatic weed Salvinia.
Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is a pale yellow to light brown liquid organic compound used as a synergist component of pesticide formulations. That is, despite having no pesticidal activity of its own, it enhances the potency of certain pesticides such as carbamates, pyrethrins, pyrethroids, and rotenone. It is a semisynthetic derivative of safrole.
N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, also called diethyltoluamide or DEET, is the oldest, most effective and most common active ingredient in commercial insect repellents. It is a slightly yellow oil intended to be applied to the skin or to clothing and provides protection against mosquitoes, flies, ticks, fleas, chiggers, leeches, and many other biting insects.
Bruce Nathan Ames is an American biochemist. He is a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). He is the inventor of the Ames test, a system for easily and cheaply testing the mutagenicity of compounds.
In organic chemistry, organophosphates are a class of organophosphorus compounds with the general structure O=P(OR)3, a central phosphate molecule with alkyl or aromatic substituents. They can be considered as esters of phosphoric acid.
Dichlorvos is an organophosphate widely used as an insecticide to control household pests, in public health, and protecting stored products from insects. The compound has been commercially available since 1961 and has become controversial because of its prevalence in urban waterways and the fact that its toxicity extends well beyond insects. Since 1988, dichlorvos cannot be used as a plant protection product in the EU.
John Edward Casida was an American entomologist, toxicologist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lynn Kimsey is an entomologist, taxonomist, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis since 1989. Her specialties are bees and wasps; and insect diversity and evolution.
The Bohart Museum of Entomology was founded in 1946 on the campus of the University of California, Davis. The museum is currently the seventh largest insect collection in North America with more than seven million specimens of terrestrial and freshwater arthropods. At least 90% of these holdings are insects. The collection is worldwide in scope with the Western Hemisphere, Indonesia, and Australasia particularly well represented.
Robert Lee Metcalf was an American entomologist, environmental toxicologist, and insect chemical ecologist. Metcalf was noted for making environmentally safe pest control achievable.
Ray Fred Smith was an American agronomist and entomologist whose research focused on biological methods of arthropod pest management. He was a chair of the Entomology Department at the University of California at Berkeley from 1959 to 1973. He was an editor of the Annual Review of Entomology from 1960 to 1977.
Walter Soares Leal is a Brazilian biochemist and entomologist who is known for identifying pheromones and mosquito attractants, and elucidating a mechanism of action of the insect repellent DEET.
Sharon Y. Strauss is an American evolutionary ecologist. She is a Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis.
John Maurice Tucker was an American botanist, herbarium director, and leading expert on oak taxonomy.
M. Saif Islam is a Bangladeshi-American engineering professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis.
Thomas Wallace Scott is an American tropical infectious disease epidemiologist.
Neal Mikkelsen Williams is an American pollination ecologist.
Myron P. Zalucki is an Australian professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Queensland (UQ). Zalucki is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, a member and secretary of the Council of the International Congresses of Entomology, and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Entomology.
Mary Foley Benson was an American scientific illustrator and fine artist. She specialized in detailed, realistic watercolor paintings of plants and insects.
Jennifer S. Thaler is an American entomologist who is a faculty member in the Department of Entomology, with a joint appointment in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She has expertise in the areas of population and community ecology, plant-insect interactions, tri-trophic interactions, and chemical ecology.
