Associate Professor
Office Location
278 National Soybean Research Center, MC-634
1101 West Peabody Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: 217-333-6820
Email: onstad@uiuc.edu
Education
Ph.D., Entomology, Cornell University, 1985
M.S., Environmental Systems Engineering, Cornell University, 1982
B.S., Biology, California State University, Sacramento, 1979
Areas of Expertise
Modeling, Entomology, Pest Management
Faculty member since 1985
Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
Research Interests
My research has increasingly stressed the theoretical and applied biology of insect and plant populations, especially their diseases, their evolution, and their management in agriculture. I enjoy the challenge of testing theories as much as I like to solve real ecological and agricultural problems. I often choose to make ecological models realistic with respect to insect behaviors, age structure, natural enemies, and dispersal for the same reason ecologists and entomologists choose to perform field experiments instead of only lab experiments. I want to test hypotheses under realistic conditions. Of course, the realism also helps when trying to solve an agricultural problem. I often use the models to perform experiments over time and spatial scales and conditions that cannot be handled in most feasible lab or field experiments. I choose the model structure and analysis that best contribute to accomplishing the goals of a project.
Although much of my work has focused on insects, I have studied plant populations and their diseases, and many of the general concepts are relevant to other taxa. These concepts include population dynamics, epidemiological thresholds, risks of exotic pathogens and parasites to native organisms, and adaptation of animal populations to dynamic and heterogeneous habitats/landscapes.
Over the past few years, my research has explored the scientifically-complex and politically-charged subject of managing insect resistance to crop rotation and genetically-engineered crops. My focus has been on European corn borer, southwestern corn borer, and western corn rootworm. I have stressed the need to consider the influence of intra-generational dynamics of the insect, sequences and interactions of insect behavior, landscape impacts on behavior, phenological changes in toxin expression in the plant, and mortality interactions that confuse descriptions of toxin dose.
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