Employee profile

Using a mixture of field experiments and mathematical models, I have been exploring issues associated with the interplay among insects and managed and natural vegetation for the past several years. I am particularly interested in how natural vegetation may be incorporated into agroecosystems in order to bolster both pest control and biodiversity. My recent work involves conducting field experiments in both temperate and tropical agroecosystems; with the help of UWT undergraduates I have been focusing on herbivorous and predatory insect distributions and movement behavior. Courses I regularly teach include Ecology and its Applications, Introduction to Restoration Ecology, Environmental Entomology, Plants & People: the Science of Agriculture, and Tropical Ecology & Sustainability.

Selected Publications:

• Banks, J.E. 2004. Divided culture: integrating agriculture and conservation biology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2(10): 537-545.
• Stark, J.D., Banks, J.E., and R. Vargas. 2004. How risky is risk assessment? The role that life history strategies play in susceptibility of species to pesticides and other toxicants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101(3):732-736.
• Banks, J.E. and C.L. Yasenak*. 2003 . Effects of plot vegetation diversity and spatial scale on Coccinella septempunctata movement in the absence of prey. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 108:197-204.
• Bommarco, R. and J.E. Banks. 2003. Scale as modifier in vegetation diversity experiments: effects on herbivores and predators. Oikos 102:440-448.
• Banks, J.E. 1998. The scale of landscape fragmentation influences herbivore response to vegetation heterogeneity. Oecologia 117(1/2): 236-246.
• Banks, J.E. 1997. Do imperfect tradeoffs affect the extinction-debt phenomenon? Ecology 78(5): 1597-1601.

* UWT undergraduate co-author