Prof Martin Downes
Gaeilge agus fáilte
Emeritus Professor
About
The work of the laboratory has to do mainly with fundamental and applied aspects of biological control of pest and pathogen populations. This includes studies of predatory mites, fungi and entomopathogenic nematodes. The objectives are to understand fundamental aspects of how genetic and geographic biotype boundaries are created and maintained, to recognize components of ecological competence which are important in the success of biological control agents, and to find or build new organisms for better commercial biological control. The ecology of characters such as natural or engineered restances is of fundamental to this work.