ABSTRACT
A primary objective of integrated pest management is to move from crop protection systems that rely on broad spectrum pesticides to more environmentally benign systems built upon target-specific chemical management tools, host plant resistance, cultural practices, and biological control. In this chapter, the authors present methods that can be used to either predict, based on the ratio of pest to natural enemy, that a population remains below a critical level, or to parsimoniously sample a population through time to answer the same question. Little work has been done in the area of sampling for predicting or monitoring biological control. The authors describe one method that can be used for prediction and two that can be used for monitoring. The performance of tripartite classification sampling plans, cascaded through time, can be evaluated using criteria's that describe expected performance when sampling the entire population process.
