Bed Bug Ecology & Control Workshop

Full Title

Socio-Spatial ecology of the bed bug and its control

Abstract

Bed bugs are a resurgent problem in cities worldwide. In this workshop we will explore how the structure of human society is implicated in bed bug distribution, and how understanding the social and geographical processes affecting bed bug populations can help direct efforts at control. We adopt a theoretical framework that views bed bug populations as metapopulations–networks of local populations coupled by dispersal.  Metapopulation ecology has been widely applied to conservation and asks how the spatial structure of a population can make it more or less sensitive to risk of extinction.  In the context of pest control, we are interested in how spatial characteristics of a pest metapopulation can be modified to reduce the proportion of habitats occupied. The workshop will evaluate potential existing spatial datasets on bed bug occurrences and various approaches to paramaterizing a stochastic patch occupancy model of bed bug metapopulations.  

Project Type
Team Synthesis Project
Date
2016
Principal Investigators
Daniel Schneider, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Michael Levy, University of Pennsylvania
Participants
Chris Sutherland, University of Massachusetts
Warren Booth, The University of Tulsa
Chris Rehmann, Iowa State University
Dawn Biehler, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Xiaoyue Xie, University of Pennsylvania
Alison Hill, Harvard University
Changlu Wang, Rutgers University
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