[noefingway]

Item 3 is important in more ways than most people realize. Last year many farmers in my area that planted soybeans early had a problem with slugs eating the sprouting beans and were forced to replant multiple times. This spring I went to a growers conference and heard a presentation by a Prof. Tooker from Penn State Ag about the slug problem, which he has been researching for several years. Turns out that the slug infestation can be directly traced to the use of insecticides used in seed treatments. The insecticides kill beetles (and other beneficial insects) that eat the slugs but don't kill slugs because they aren't insects (they are mollusks). No beetles more slugs. Take away is don't use treated seed. However, standard practice at seed companies is to treat seed with fungicides and insecticides, thus creating a problem rather than solving it.

[cameron_b]

The attempt is surely to solve for an abundance of beetles, but it is often helpful to think of many of these 'problems' as imbalances.

Nature does not work in two-variable equations, and the abundance or absence of an element typically has repercussions that are difficult to study.

An often-cited example of missing the bigger picture in controlling one variable would be the Chinese campaign against the Four Pests - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

[vaylian]

When I think about insects and slugs, then slugs are typically considerably larger and have more body mass. Is it only the smaller slugs or slug eggs that the insects eat? I have a hard time imagining a beetle eating a slug.

[behringer]

We just need to add a mollusk treatment!

[zeristor]

The beetles are the mollusc treatment.

[fsckboy]

copper kills invertebrates (it's in a range of fishtank infection treatments, doesn't kill fish but will kill snails and crabs)