Hi, everybody, it's Joe Lample, the Joe behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner

show.

At the time that we set up this podcast interview with today's guest, Dr. Caitlin Stack

Whitney, it was intended to be primarily and nearly entirely around a peer written article

that she authored regarding the practice and concerns on using wild harvested and widely

distributed ladybugs, specifically convergent ladybirds, as they're commonly known, they're

taken from sites in and around the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

And as you likely know, they are then stored and then shipped to retailers into home gardeners

all across the country who are buying them and using those ladybugs as a natural or biological

pest control against mainly aphids and other soft-bodied insect pests.

And without full knowledge of the unintended consequences of this natural pest control

strategy, the idea seems fairly benign, but it's not.

And that's what I wanted to talk to Dr. Stack Whitney about today.

And we certainly do.

But the added benefit of this conversation today goes much deeper than just the concerns

of transporting and using non-local ladybugs, especially when there are many resident ladybugs,

pretty much wherever we live.

Dr. Stack Whitney is an environmental studies scholar and assistant professor in the science,

technology and society department at the Rockchester Institute of Technology, College of Liberal

Arts.

And as she describes it, her research is at the intersection of policy, animal studies,

and ecosystem services, often but not always, with insects as focal organisms.

...