Environ. En!om,,!. 12: 1892-1897 (1983) ABSTRACT We determined the susceptibility of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decem/ineata (Say) to the fungal pathogen Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo)when reared on So/anum tuberosum L., So/anum dulcamara L., So/anum carolineme L., and Lycopersicwn escu/entum Miller growing in both the field and greenhouse. With the exceptionof L. escu/entwn, the ho...

The difficulties specialized phytophagous insects face in finding habitats with an appropriate host should constrain their dispersal. Within the concept of metacommunities, this leads to the prediction that host-plant specialists should sort into local assemblages according to the local environmental conditions, i.e. habitat conditions, whereas assemblages of host-plant generalists should depen...

Apolygus lucorum (Hemiptera: Miridae) is an important insect pest of cotton and fruit trees in China. The adults prefer host plants at the flowering stage, and their populations track flowering plants both spatially and temporally. In this study, we examine whether flower preference of its adults is mediated by plant volatiles, and which volatile compositions play an important role in attractin...

Salicylic acid (SA)-mediated host immunity plays a central role in combating microbial pathogens in plants. Inactivation of SA-mediated immunity, therefore, would be a critical step in the evolution of a successful plant pathogen. It is known that mutations in conserved effector loci (CEL) in the plant pathogens Pseudomonas syringae (the Delta CEL mutation), Erwinia amylovora (the dspA/E mutati...

When parasitic plants and aphid herbivores share a host, both direct and indirect ecological effects (IEEs) can influence evolutionary processes. We used a hemiparasitic plant (Rhinanthus minor), a grass host (Hordeum vulgare) and a cereal aphid (Sitobion avenae) to investigate the genetics of IEEs between the aphid and the parasitic plant, and looked to see how these might affect or be influen...

laboratory experiments were conducted to understand the influence of host-finding behaviour of apanteles subandinus blanchard and orgilus lepidus muesebeck, two endoparasitoids of the potato tuber moth (ptm) phthorimaea operculella zeller (lepidop-tera: gelechiidae), in a successful biological control of the pest. responses of the two parasitoids to their host and to three host plants of the pt...

Although a large portion of plant and animal species exhibit intermediate levels of outcrossing, the factors that maintain this wealth of variation are not well understood. Natural enemies are one relatively understudied ecological factor that may influence the evolutionary stability of mixed mating. In this paper, we aim for a conceptual unification of the role of enemies in mating system expr...