The soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsumura), a new pest of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], rapidly spread throughout North America after its arrival in 2000 and caused millions of dollars in economic losses. At present, the application of insecticides is the only means to control the soybean aphid. However, genetic resistance to the aphid was recently discovered in soybean germplasm and the ...

Aphids are a major family of plant insect pests. Medicago truncatula and Acyrthosiphon pisum (pea aphid, PA) are model species with a suite of resources available to help dissect the mechanism underlying plant-aphid interactions. A previous study focused on monogenic and relatively strong resistance in M. truncatula to PA and other aphid species. In this study a moderate resistance to PA was ch...

Aphids are phloem feeders that cause large damage globally as pest insects. They induce a variety of responses in the host plant, but not much is known about which responses are promoting or inhibiting aphid performance. Here, we investigated whether one of the responses induced in barley by the cereal aphid, bird cherry-oat aphid (Rhopalosiphum padi L.) affects aphid performance in the model p...

Soybean aphid is an economic pest of soybean in North America. Currently, management of soybean aphid is achieved through the use of foliar- and seed-applied insecticides. However, natural enemies play an important role in regulating soybean aphid populations, and may be adversely affected by insecticides. The effects of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam seed treatments on the soybean aphid parasit...

The drive towards a more sustainable and integrated approach to pest management has engendered a renewed interest in conservation biological control, the role of natural enemy communities and their interactions with prey. Monoclonal antibodies have provided significant advances in enhancing our knowledge of trophic interactions and can be employed to help quantify predation on target species. T...

Study of mechanisms responsible for regulating populations of living organisms is essential for a better comprehension of the structure of biological communities and evolutionary forces in nature. Aphids (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha) comprise a large and economically important group of phytophagous insects distributed worldwide. Previous studies determined that density-dependent mechanisms play ...