AP®︎ Environmental Science: Topic 5.6 Flashcards

Use of chemical substances or biological traits to reduce organisms that cause harm; it decreases crop losses and increases yields but creates environmental and evolutionary trade-offs

Any organism considered harmful in a particular human context, such as an insect, weed, fungus, or rodent that damages crops or stored food

A substance used to kill, repel, suppress, or otherwise control a pest; herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and insecticides are types

A pesticide that controls unwanted plants or weeds that compete with crops

Selective herbicides affect particular plant groups while largely sparing the crop; nonselective herbicides damage most plants they contact

A pesticide that controls fungi or fungal spores by preventing colonization or interfering with fungal growth or reproduction

A pesticide used to control rodents, especially those damaging field crops or stored food

A pesticide that controls insects that feed on crops or transmit disease

An insecticide that kills many kinds of insects, including potentially beneficial pollinators, predators, and parasitoids

Movement of pesticide spray droplets away from the application site by wind, potentially exposing neighboring habitats and non-target organisms

Unintended harm from pest control to organisms other than the intended pest, such as pollinators, natural predators, wildlife, or soil organisms

Poisoning of a predator or scavenger after it consumes prey that was exposed to a pesticide, especially a rodenticide

Inherited ability to survive a pesticide dose that kills susceptible individuals; repeated use increases resistant individuals in the pest population

Evolution in which a human action determines which heritable traits are favored, as pesticide use favors resistant pests that survive and reproduce

Cycle in which resistance reduces a pesticide’s effectiveness, prompting heavier, more frequent, or different chemical use that selects for further resistance

Use of biotechnology to change an organism’s DNA, including adding crop traits that increase resistance to pests or diseases

Crops whose DNA has been altered to carry protective traits against pests or pathogens, reducing crop damage and sometimes reducing pesticide applications

Crops engineered with a Bacillus thuringiensis gene to produce a protein toxic to certain insect larvae, such as Bt corn and Bt cotton

Crops engineered to survive a particular herbicide so the chemical can kill weeds without killing the crop

Genetic variation among crop plants; planting a few closely related engineered varieties can reduce it and make the crop broadly vulnerable to a new threat

Inherited ability of pests to survive a crop’s protective trait; repeated exposure favors survivors and increases resistance across generations