Cirad - Dominique CARVAL - Informations sur l'agent

Research activity

I work on the pest of bananas and plantains. My main actual focus is the study of the arthropod communities and their relationships between the vegetal diversity in tropical agroecosystems. However, I try to work on the different biological agents of these agroecosytems and used modelling tools to integreate ecological processes observed in the field to improve my understanding of ecosystem functionning.

Research topics

- Agroecology

- Pest management

- Ant community in tropical agroecosystems

- Ecological modelling

- Food web ecology

Ant communities in tropical agroecosystems

When you are working on tropical agroecosystems, you are rapidly facing a particluar and very interesting group of arthropods, the ants.

Ants are preponderant in tropical agroecosystems and their influence on the functionning of arthropod communities cannot be ignored. By their ubiquity and abundance, ants represent an important group of potential agents of biological control.

I conduct field studies in Martinique, Costa Rica and Cameroun to assess such potential in a context of ecological diversification of agroecosystems.

Ants in Martinique

I started to interest in antsby working in banana fields in Martinique. Here is a list of ant species that are encountered in Martinique agroecosystems. With 43 identified species, this list is very likely incomplete and should be regularly updated. Please contact me if you have specimens of ants of Martinique.

Behavioural ecology and population dynamics of the banana weevil Cosmoplites sordidus

Population dynamics of the banana rind trhips Elixothrips brevisetis

Nematode communities in tropical agroecosystems

The Black Leaf Streak Disease

Ecological Modelling

Theoretical Modelling

Individual Based Modelling

PhD student supervision

PhD Thesis of Charlotte Poeydebat: Régulations écologiques d’un complexe de bio-agresseurs dans un gradient de complexité spatiale et de biodiversité, cas des systèmes de culture bananiers (2014-2016) (Co-directed with Philippe Tixier and Luc de Lapeyre de Bellaire)

PhD Thesis of Blanche Collard: Multiscale modelling of the effect of spatial organisation of plant diversity on pest regulation (2016-2018) (Co-directed with Claire Lavigne & Thomas Delattre)

Publications

Poeydebat C., Tixier P., Chabrier C., de Lapeyre de Bellaire L., Daribo M.O., Vargas R., Carval D. 2017. Does plant richness alter multitrophic soil food web and promote plant-parasitic nematode regulation in banana agroecosystems? Applied Soil Ecology, in press.

Carval D., Cotté V., Resmond R., Perrin B., Tixier P. 2016. Dominance in a ground-dwelling ant community of banana agroecosystem. Ecology and Evolution, 6: 8617-8631.

Poeydebat C., Carval D., de Lapeyre de Bellaire L., Tixier P. 2016. Balancing competition for resources with multiple pest regulation in diversified agroecosystems: a process-based approach to reconcile diversification and productivity. Ecology and Evolution, 6: 8607-8616.

Carval D., Resmond R., Achard R., Tixier P. 2016. Cover cropping reduces the abundance of the banana weevil Cosmopolites sordidus but does not reduce its damage to the banana plants. Biological control, 99 : 14-18.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2016.04.004

Carval D., Resmond R., Achard R., Tixier P. 2016. Data on the abundance of the banana weevil Cosmopolites sordidus and of the earwig Euborellia caraibea in bare soil and cover crop plots. Data in Brief, 7: 1565-1569. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2016.04.056