Cereal aphid movement: general principles and simulation modelling

Cereal aphid movement: general principles and simulation modelling Parry HR. Movement Ecology 2013, 1:14

I'm really going in for the open access thing, this is my second publication in that format!  As aphids are widely studied and modelled, I hope that having open access to this review article will help people navigate the literature much more easily. There is an enormous amount of study out there on both the biology and ecology of aphid flight as well as many examples of models that address the different phases of movement. So, I put together a review of principles, parameters and methodologies to construct mechanistic simulation models of cereal aphid flight: including uplift, transportation, deposition and subsequent spread.  I've chosen to publish in the new journal 'Movement Ecology' as I think it will be an important scientific journal in a rapidly growing field going into the future, and I'm truly honoured to be one of the first papers published there. 

Many thanks to Andy Jensen, Eagle, Idaho, U.S.A. for the image of an alate R. padi shown above, that has been used as the thumbnail for the paper on the journal homepage.  Andy takes great aphid photos and kindly allowed me to use this image, thank you. 

Practical guidelines for modelling post-entry spread in invasion ecology

My first open-access journal article has just been published!  It is part of a special issue in the new journal 'Neobiota':

Parry HR, Sadler RJ, Kriticos DJ (2013) Practical guidelines for modelling post-entry spread in invasion ecology. In: Kriticos DJ, Venette RC (Eds) Advancing risk assessment models to address climate change, economics and uncertainty. NeoBiota 18: 41–66. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.18.4305

If you follow the link above it takes you to the paper on the journal's website, and from there you can download the pdf.  This paper has evolved over the past couple of years out of discussion with the co-authors and other members of the International Pest Risk Mapping Workgroup, so quite a bit of discussion and thought went into it over time.  We try to give something of a 'roadmap' for modellers faced with a wide range of pest risk management questions relating to post-entry spread in invasion ecology, taking into account considerations such as spatial and temporal scales but also constraints such as, inevitably, time and money.  In the end I hope we have come up with something that is useful!

The following diagram (figure 4 in the paper) is a good summary of some of the paper's concepts, but requires a fair bit of explanation that can be found in the paper, along with a lot more exciting stuff, like dealing with uncertainty!

Flow diagram to illustrate the modelling process with concepts from the paper (please click on image to enlarge).