BSCI483 - Insects, Pathogens and Public Health
​BSCI 483 Syllabus (3 credits, offered fall semester of each year)

BSCI 483 Course Overview
Long-term global food security requires a sustainable increase in agricultural productivity to
ensure the availability and accessibility of safe and nutritious food. Agricultural pests reduce
global food production and threaten its sustainability. This course explores sustainable pest
management in agroecosystems using the integrated pest management (IPM) paradigm.
IPM is an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their
damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat
manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties. Pesticides are
used only after monitoring indicates they are needed according to established guidelines,
and treatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organism. Pest control
materials are selected and applied in a manner that minimizes risks to human health,
beneficial and non-target organisms, and the environment. While this course focuses on
pests of agroecosystems, we will also cover pests of structures, ornamentals, nurseries,
greenhouses, and forestry to highlight the diverse applications of the IPM paradigm.

Objectives
  • Compare and contrast arthropod-caused injury versus arthropod-borne disease transmission and provide at least 3 examples/descriptions of each per in-class discussions.
  • Describe the morphological, physiological and/or behavioral features of blood-feeding arthropods that contribute to their status as potential public health enemies. 
  • Design a series of experiments to implicate an arthropod vector when given a novel/emerging vector-borne disease scenario.
  • Recall the factors influencing vectorial capacity, and predict how changes in these factors would influence vector-borne disease transmission.
  • Describe the One Health Initiative, and provide at least two examples of the relationships between human, animal, and ecosystem health as they pertain to arthropod-borne disease.
  • Prescribe and justify their choice of a management tactic when given a potential arthropod-borne disease transmission scenario.