Dr Hazel Parry

Dr Hazel Parry seeks to gain knowledge on environmental drivers of increased pest and disease outbreak risk across space and time. This knowledge supports cost-effective and efficient spatiotemporal decisions for integrated pest and disease management, ranging from dynamic thresholds for pesticide application to conservation biocontrol.

This generally involves taking a holistic perspective, considering the farm landscape as a whole and thinking beyond the crop. By combining a field-based, ecological approach with spatially-explicit simulation models, Dr Parry’s research aims to address the global challenges of food security and health crises at the landscape scale, such as increasing agricultural productivity whilst minimising our impact on the natural resource base. She has incorporated both an economic and social dimension into her work, which she sees as important to achieve impact. Her vision for the future is that new sensor technology for monitoring pests and beneficials can combine with powerful ecological models and MLAI for forecasting population dynamics within agricultural landscapes to support real-time, informed, integrated pest management decisions: Digital Integrated Pest Management (IPM), or a Digital Twin for Area-wide IPM.

Dr Parry's research over the past 15 years at CSIRO has the following three themes.

Research Themes

1) Movement ecology

Understanding what drives the movement behaviour of a species is a powerful way to begin to estimate where a species may distribute itself in space and time. Individual organisms can exhibit behaviours during all three stages of movement (initiation, transportation and deposition) that can be influenced by multiple environmental and biological factors. Understanding these processes allows us to model what the likely implications might be for the population distribution in space and time.

Key research:
* Movement and egg-laying behaviour of Lepidoptera (Helicoverpa spp. and Monarch butterflies) (CRDC funded, collaboration with Professor Myron Zalucki, University of Queensland, Professor Tony Ives, University of Wisconsin and Tyler Grant, Iowa State University)
* Flying-fox (fruit bat) movement and foraging behaviour with implications for Hendra virus risk (RIRDC funded)
* Insect pest and natural enemy movement across a native vegetation-crop ecotone (GRDC funded, collaboration with DAF Qld)
* PhD student Jaye Newman (joint with Prof. Tony Clarke, QUT) graduated 2023: Larval host use of Bactrocera tryoni and its effect on emergent populations within the local environment

Selected publications:
* Giles, J.R., Eby, P., Parry, H. et al. (2018) Environmental drivers of spatiotemporal foraging intensity in fruit bats and implications for Hendra virus ecology. Nature Scientific Reports 8, 9555 (50 citations)
* Jones C, Parry H, Tay T, Reynolds D, Chapman J 2019. Movement Ecology of Pest Helicoverpa: Implications for Ongoing Spread. Annual Review of Entomology 64: 277-295 (111 citations)
* Parry HR 2013. Cereal aphid movement: general principles and simulation modelling. Movement Ecology 1, 1-15 (104 citations)

2) Area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) of mobile pests in dynamic socio-agroecological systems

Insect pest populations are not contained within a crop field, yet this is the primary scale at which management views the problem. A consideration of the spatiotemporal population dynamics of both pests and beneficials across landscapes allows us to better consider the extent and timing of management decisions necessary to more effectively control pest populations. An important factor is the complex structure and dynamics of the landscape itself, something that can be very important in understanding the persistence of pests in time and space, yet is often ignored or highly simplified in landscape ecological studies.

In addition, to overcome barriers to the uptake of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and facilitate adoption, a focus on ecological processes is not sufficient: we need to understand the role of the socio-economic dimension. We still have a long way to go to better align our understanding of socio-economic and ecological systems for more effective IPM; for example cost-benefit evaluation of conservation biological control is still in its infancy and economic thresholds for pesticide spray are not yet dynamic. Undertaking multi- and inter-disciplinary research is also not without challenges. However, it is at this interface that research may have the greatest impact in enabling the uptake of IPM practices, and the work Dr Parry is currently leading aims to co-develop digital tools with farming communities to facilitate AW-IPM.

Key research:
* Pest READI: Regionally-enabled Agroecological Decision Intelligence (project leader, Hort Frontiers funded, collaboration with Macquarie University, NSW DPIRD, Queensland DPI, GrowCom and Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation)
* Canola Allies (GRDC funded, collaboration with WA DPIRD, NSW DPIRD, SARDI, and its alignment with University of Adelaide, and Murdoch University)
* Area-wide management of Queensland Fruit-fly (Bactrocera tryoni) for Sterile Insect Technique (project leader, Rural R&D for Profit funded, collaboration with Hort Innovation, QUT, AgVic, NSW DPI, SARDI/PIRSA and a number of industry bodies)
* Improved Management of Rutherglen bug in the Northern Region (project leader, GRDC funded, collaboration with the University of Queensland and NSW DPI).
* New Knowledge of Pest and beneficials in Grains (project leader, GRDC funded, collaboration with cesar, SARDI, NSW DPI, University of Melbourne and WA DPIRD)
* Movement of Helicoverpa spp. and implications for Bt resistance management (CRDC funded, collaboration with Professor Myron Zalucki, University of Queensland and Professor Tony Ives, University of Wisconsin)
* Cassava whitefly in Africa (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded collaboration): best management practice for the introduction of whitefly-resistant Cassava varieties.
* Collaboration with Dr Aude Vialatte, Dynafor-INRA (Toulouse), particularly in relation to the MAELIA platform for integrating environmental, social and economic impacts for ecosystem services research (INRAE-CSIRO grant).

Selected publications:
* Downes S, Kriticos D, Parry H, Paull C, Schellhorn N, Zalucki MP. (2017) A perspective on management of Helicoverpa armigera: transgenic Bt cotton, IPM, and landscapes. Pest Manag Sci. 73(3):485-492 (126 citations)
* Parry, H (2022) Economic benefits of conservation biocontrol: A spatially explicit bioeconomic model for insect pest management in agricultural landscapes. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10, 970624 (6 citations)
* Parry, H. R., Macfadyen, S., Hopkinson, J. E., Bianchi, F. J., Zalucki, M. P., Bourne, A., & Schellhorn, N. A. (2015). Plant composition modulates arthropod pest and predator abundance: evidence for culling exotics and planting natives. Basic and Applied Ecology, 16(6), 531-543. (57 citations)
* Schellhorn, N.A., Parry, H.R., Macfadyen, S., Wang, Y. and Zalucki, M.P. (2015), Connecting scales: Achieving in-field pest control from areawide and landscape ecology studies. Insect Science, 22: 35-51(94 citations)

3) Methods and best practice in spatiotemporal modelling, including both simulation and MLAI approaches

Spatial simulation modelling, encompassing a range of techniques from individual-based to matrix approaches, is constantly evolving as a field. Tackling the challenges of calibrating and validating simulation models with empirical studies from the lab and the field has been a key research focus. In recent years, supervising the development of MLAI approaches to pest monitoring and exploring the opportunity for real-time data collection integrated with simulation has opened many new avenues of research that we are only just starting to explore. This includes how we translate science into impact, see Dr Parry’s recent Nature article ‘Large language models can help to translate science into real-world impact’.

Selected publications:
* Amarathunga DC, Grundy J, Parry H, and Dorin, A (2021) Methods of insect image capture and classification: A Systematic literature review. Smart Agricultural Technology 1, 100023 (48 citations)
* Parry, H.R. and Bithell, M. (2011) Large scale agent-based modelling: A review and guidelines for model scaling. In Agent-based models of geographical systems, Springer pp 271-308 (110 citations)
* Parry, H. R., Eagles, D., and Kriticos, D. J. (2015). Simulation modelling of long-distance windborne dispersal for invasion ecology. In Pest risk modelling and mapping for invasive alien species (pp. 49-64). Wallingford UK: CABI. (12 citations)
* Parry H, Sadler R, and Kriticos D (2013) Practical guidelines for modelling post-entry spread in invasion ecology. NeoBiota 18: 41-66. (26 citations)
* Parry, H. R., Topping, C. J., Kennedy, M. C., Boatman, N. D., & Murray, A. W. (2013). A Bayesian sensitivity analysis applied to an Agent-based model of bird population response to landscape change. Environmental Modelling & Software, 45, 104-115. (78 citations)