Bracchetti, L.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F.A. Multiple Aspects of the Fight against the Red Palm Weevil in an Urban Area: Study Case, San Benedetto del Tronto (Central Italy). Insects2023, 14, 502.
Bracchetti, L.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F.A. Multiple Aspects of the Fight against the Red Palm Weevil in an Urban Area: Study Case, San Benedetto del Tronto (Central Italy). Insects 2023, 14, 502.
Bracchetti, L.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F.A. Multiple Aspects of the Fight against the Red Palm Weevil in an Urban Area: Study Case, San Benedetto del Tronto (Central Italy). Insects2023, 14, 502.
Bracchetti, L.; Cocci, P.; Palermo, F.A. Multiple Aspects of the Fight against the Red Palm Weevil in an Urban Area: Study Case, San Benedetto del Tronto (Central Italy). Insects 2023, 14, 502.
Abstract
The implications related to the fight against alien organisms often affect different sectors, from the economic to the landscape one or from the public health to the ecological one. This paper is an upgrade of our previous study focused on the evolution of the red palm weevil in a coastal urban area (central Italy); we investigate the evolution of this parasite in the following period (2013-2020), considering both the effectiveness of the chemicals used and their potential effects. With a multidisciplinary approach, on the one hand we carried out a spatio-temporal analysis to analyze the extent and mode of pest spread over time using historical aerial photos, freely available remote sensing images and field surveys, integrated in a GIS environment, and on the other hand we performed an assessment of the chemical risk associated with the substances used to protect the palms from the red weevil. The fight against weevil is now concentrated in specific areas (parks, relevant roads, villas, hotels, farmhouses, nurseries); the applied preventive chemical treatments are very effective in preserving the palms, but they show a toxic potential for all organisms. We discuss current local management of this pest focusing on the several aspects involve into the fight against this beetle in an urban area.
Keywords
red palm weevil; fight; pesticides; potential chemical risk; urban environment; GIS; spatial distribution analysis
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
