TY  - JOUR
T1  - Biological Control Is a Multi-Kingdom Process Connecting Predators, Parasitoids, Pathogens, Endophytes, Host Plants, and Resident Microbiota
A1  - Ying Li
A1  - Hui Wang
A1  - Xiaoming Chen
A1  - Jun Zhang
JF  - Entomology and Applied Science Letters
JO  - Entomol Appl Sci Lett
SN  - 2349-2864
Y1  - 2026
VL  - 13
IS  - 2
DO  - 10.51847/H1Az0bCSeI
SP  - 24
EP  - 32
N2  - Biological control is commonly designed and evaluated around individual agents, even though pest suppression emerges within agroecosystems containing interacting predators, parasitoids, pathogens, endophytes, host plants, herbivores, resident microbiota, and environmental conditions. This separation creates a conceptual and decision problem: the presence or isolated efficacy of several beneficial organisms does not establish that they interact functionally, remain compatible, or produce stable network-level control. This theory article develops an evidence-grounded, explicitly non-validated synthesis for interpreting biological control as a conditional multi-kingdom process. It integrates natural-enemy diversity, food-web structure, predator and parasitoid traits, entomopathogenic and endophytic functions, plant-mediated defence, insect-associated microbiota, cross-kingdom feedback, and environmental moderation. The central synthesis is that each biological component must remain analytically distinct and should enter a multi-kingdom theory only through traceable mechanisms, directional relations, defined inputs, measurable outputs, and explicit boundary conditions. Complementarity may strengthen suppression, but interference, hyperparasitism, intraguild predation, unstable colonization, misleading plant signals, protective symbionts, and environmental mismatch can reverse expected benefits. Evidence is uneven across organisms, scales, experimental settings, and management contexts, while many mechanistic findings remain concentrated in simplified systems. Consequently, the proposed theory should not be interpreted as a validated programme architecture or deployment-ready framework. Progress requires factorial and temporally explicit experiments, complete life-cycle and network outcomes, verified microbial and endophytic states, multi-site validation, and independent evaluation of efficacy, compatibility, persistence, environmental sensitivity, and operational feasibility.
UR  - https://easletters.com/article/biological-control-is-a-multi-kingdom-process-connecting-predators-parasitoids-pathogens-endophyt-6bmmtdbtbnweusk
ER  -