What is ILCYM?

Insect Life Cycle Modeling software (ILCYM – version 4.0) facilitates the development of pest insect phenology models and provides analytical tools for studying pest population ecology. ILCYM software consists of two main modules. One, the “model builder”, facilitates the development of insect phenology models based on experimental temperature data of a specific pest. This module also provides tools to analyze an insect life-table and to validate developed models. The second module implements the phenology model in a GIS environment and allows for spatial – global or regional simulation of pest activities (“pest risk mapping”). The objective of ILCYM software is to provide an open-source computer aided tool that facilitates the development of phenology models for researchers and students using advanced modeling techniques. ILCYM interactively leads the user through the steps for developing a pest phenology model, or for conducting spatial simulations with a developed pest model. We are aware that a single modeling approach will not fit to each pest species of interest and that it cannot meet each purpose for which a model needs to be developed. However, the approach presented here might be applicable to many pest species and many circumstances for which pest phenology models are needed. ILCYM was developed on the shiny application, which is an R package that makes it easy to build interactive web apps straight from R. In the present version of ILCYM a phenology model of the potato tuber moth is provided for testing, training & demonstration purposes

Subsequent versions will be improved to adjust to a wider range of pest species of different insect orders and families.