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Updated: Dec 27, 2025

Quantification of the Potential Impact of Glyphosate-Based Products on Microbiomes
Published on: January 10, 2022
Characterizing ecological interaction networks to support risk assessment in classical biological control of weeds
Melodie Ollivier1, Vincent Lesieur2, Sathyamurthy Raghu3
1CBGP, Montpellier SupAgro, INRAE, CIRAD, IRD, Univ Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
Abstract:
A key element in weed biological control is the selection of a biological control agent that minimizes the risks of non-target attack and indirect effects on the recipient community. Network ecology is a promising approach that could help decipher tritrophic interactions in both the native and the invaded ranges, to complement quarantine-based host-specificity tests and gain insights on potential interactions of biological control agents. This review highlights practical questions addressed by networks, including 1) biological control agent selection, based on specialization indices, 2) risk assessment of biological control agent release into a novel environment, via particular patterns of association such as apparent competition between agent(s) and native herbivore(s), 3) network comparisons through structural metrics, 4) potential of network modelling and 5) limits of network construction methods.
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