Introduction

Entomopathogenic fungi are natural enemies of insects and arachnids and the fung
i contribute
to the regulation of their host populations. In agriculture, the fungi have been
observed to
cause mortality in pest populations and several fungal species have been investi
gated for their
potential as biological control agents. The traditional approach in biological c
ontrol with
entomopathogenic fungi has been to apply the fungal material (usually conidia) t
o the
cropping system, using an inundative or inoculative biological control strategy
(Eilenberg et
al., 2001). Thus these approaches do not exploit the indigenous reservoir of fun
gi that is
already present in the cropping system.