Biological control of the chestnut gall wasp with \emph{T. sinensis}: a mathematical model

TL;DR

This paper presents a mathematical model for biological control of the chestnut gall wasp using . sinensis, showing how spatial dynamics and traveling waves influence pest suppression and potential re-colonization.

Contribution

It introduces a spatially explicit mathematical model capturing seasonal and spatial interactions between pest and parasitoid populations.

Findings

Traveling waves of . sinensis can effectively eliminate the pest.

Re-colonization occurs if diffusion rates favor pest spread.

Spatial patterns remain dynamic, preventing stable equilibrium.

Abstract

The Asian chestnut gall wasp \emph{Dryocosmus kuriphilus}, native of China, has become a pest when it appeared in Japan, Korea, and the United States. In Europe it was first found in Italy, in 2002. In 1982 the host-specific parasitoid \emph{Torymus sinensis} was introduced in Japan, in an attempt to achieve a biological control of the pest. After an apparent initial success, the two species seem to have locked in predator-prey cycles of decadal length. We have developed a spatially explicit mathematical model that describes the seasonal time evolution of the adult insect populations, and the competition for finding egg deposition sites. In a spatially homogeneous situation the model reduces to an iterated map for the egg density of the two species. While the map would suggest, for realistic parameters, that both species should become locally extinct (somewhat corroborating the hypothesis of biological control), the full model, for the same parameters, shows that the introduction of \emph{T. sinensis} sparks a traveling wave of the parasitoid population that destroys the pest on its passage. Depending on the value of the diffusion coefficients of the two species, the pest can later be able to re-colonize the empty area left behind the wave. When this occurs the two populations do not seem to attain a state of spatial homogeneity, but produce an ever-changing pattern of traveling waves.