A chess-like board game developed by University of Michigan researchers helps small-scale Mexican coffee farmers better understand the complex interactions between the insects and fungi that live on their plants—and how some of those creatures can help provide natural pest control.
A chess-like board game developed by University of Michigan researchers helps small-scale Mexican coffee farmers better understand the complex interactions between the insects and fungi that live on their plants—and how some of those creatures can help provide natural pest control.
Instead of queens, knights, bishops and pawns, the Azteca Chess board game uses tokens representing ants, ladybugs, wasps and flies living on a shade-coffee bush. The goal of the two-player game is for each player to capture the opponent's insect tokens.
The network of insects and fungi that live on these plants has the potential to aid in the control of the coffee-rust fungus, which has ravaged Latin American plantations for several years, according to University of Michigan ecologists Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer, who helped develop the board game. The game helps to drive home that point.
"Most of these farmers pay little attention to, or have little knowledge of, the behavior of the many small, inconspicuous organisms that may be key to the operation of autonomous pest control," said Perfecto, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment.
Read more at University of Michigan
Image: Mateo Verdugo- whom coincidentally lives in the small hamlet of “Azteca” on the slopes of the Tacaná Volcano- enjoys playing Azteca Chess (Credit: University of Michigan)
