The entomopathogen fungus Nomuraea rileyi (Farlow) Samson may produce epizooties in populations of velvetbean caterpillar, Anticarsia gemmatalis (Huebner) under specific conditions. However, sometimes the epizooty does not occur in time to avoid that populations of the pest reach economic threshold level in the soybean crop. A mathematical model was created to simulate occurrence of N. rileyi on populations of A. gemmatalis in soybean crops of Florida, USA. The objective of this work was to develop a system to integrate this original model with several other models (phenology of pest and crop, insect plant interactions, and population dynamics of the pest), in order to generate more accurate simulations on the pest management. These models were developed from ecological studies involving organisms in soybean fields of Brazil. The integrated system was proposed based on equations of differences that are processed as differential equations through the software STELLA, version 5.0 Research. The evaluation of the system using data from soybean fields from Planaltina, DF, and Londrina, PR, showed that the model was able to simulate occurrence of epizooties or pest outbreaks in field conditions.
Insecta; entomogenous fungi; epizooty; pest management
