Virtual tour of the department 

Research interests include:

• Integrated pest management and arthropod ecology.
• Environment-friendly control measures.
• Chemical control, insecticide biochemistry and toxicology.
• Insect and nematode physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology.
• Taxonomy and fauna surveys.

Aspects of these studies include:

• population dynamics of arthropod pests in deciduous fruit trees and citrus orchards, olive orchards, cut flower beds and field crops;
• using the composition of insect communities to reveal migratory movement rates, as an indicator of environmental perturbation, for conservation purposes;
use of geostatistical tools and geographic information systems to study spatial dependence of citrus, olive and forest insects;
development of phenological models;
study of dispersion patterns in scale insects in order to define optimal sampling units;
utilization of molecular and statistical techniques to analyze the geographic origin of insect pests and to study population genetics;
study of the chemical ecology and nutrition of fruit flies and other insects;
studies of insect physiology and neuro-endocrinology at the cellular and molecular level and implementation of the knowledge for rational design of environment-friendly control agents based on disruption of the neuroendocrine system;

Staff members located at the regional centers:

• Mansour Fadel, Ph.D., Newe Ya'ar
• Palevsky Eric, Ph.D., Newe Ya'ar
• Zchori-Fein Einat, Ph.D., Newe Ya'ar
  
  
• Horowitz Rami A., Ph.D., Gilat
• Oka Yuji, Ph.D., Gilat
• Weintraub Phyllis, Ph.D., Gilat