Dr. Greta L. Schuster has more than 25 years of experience in integrated pest management (IPM), plant pathology, pest surveillance, and agricultural systems research, with extensive work addressing invasive and economically important pests in Texas agroecosystems. Her appointments have combined research, teaching, and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension responsibilities, providing experience in both development of pest-management information and its application by producers and agricultural professionals.
Invasive pest management and biological control: Dr. Schuster has contributed to research on invasive pests and their management, including work on cattle fever ticks, an invasive livestock pest of major importance in South Texas. Her publications include research on the rationale and field collection of natural enemies for classical biological control (Goolsby et al. 2016) and an integrated strategy for sustainable cattle fever tick eradication under global-change conditions (Pérez de León et al. 2012). This work demonstrates experience integrating pest biology, environmental conditions, host interactions, and management considerations—key components of risk-based surveillance.
Spatial and environmental risk modeling: Schuster was a coauthor of Wang et al. (2016), “Simulated interactions of white-tailed deer, climate variation and habitat heterogeneity on southern cattle tick eradication methods in south Texas.” Published in Ecological Modelling, this study explicitly examined interactions among climate, habitat heterogeneity, host distribution, and pest-eradication strategies. These are directly relevant foundations for developing spatially explicit risk models to identify areas requiring intensified surveillance.
Understanding spatial and temporal pest distributions: Earlier research with Wheeler and colleagues examined the variability in time and space of Meloidogyne incognita population density in cotton fields (Wheeler et al. 2000). This work provides directly relevant experience with characterizing spatial and temporal patterns of an agriculturally important pest and illustrates the applicant’s long-standing interest in using distributional information to support pest-management decisions.
Pest surveillance and applied diagnostics: Dr. Schuster’s research and Extension activities have addressed identification and monitoring of plant pathogens and arthropod pests, including cotton boll rot and associated microorganisms (Schuster et al. 2016), bacterial blight of cotton, Helicoverpa zea insecticide susceptibility, potato zebra chip disease, and the first U.S. report of “Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum” on field tomatoes (French-Monar et al. 2010). This background is relevant to establishing surveillance protocols and interpreting biological and environmental indicators of pest occurrence.
Integration of ecological factors with pest management: Her publication on vegetation and arthropod responses to brush reduction (Crouch et al. 2017), together with the broader synthesis of effects of invasive plants on arthropods (Litt et al. 2014), demonstrates experience evaluating relationships between habitat characteristics and arthropod communities. Such ecological understanding is important for identifying landscape-level predictors of invasive mealy bug establishment and spread.
Extension and stakeholder-oriented IPM experience: From 1995–1998, Dr. Schuster served as an AgriLife Extension IPM Agent, followed by appointments incorporating Plant Pathology Extension responsibilities at West Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University–Kingsville. Her Extension publications and applied research—including Texas Corn Production: Emphasizing Pest Management and Irrigation and BT Corn Technology in Texas: A Practical View—demonstrate experience translating pest-management research into practical recommendations for producers and agricultural professionals.
B.S. in Animal Science, East Texas State University - 1985
M.S. in Agronomy, East Texas State University - 1991
Ph.D. in Virology, Texas A&M University - 1994
