Parasitoids are among the most important natural enemies of insects in many environments. Acyrthosiphon pisum, the pea aphid, is a common pest of the leguminous crops in temperate regions. Pea aphids are frequently attacked by a range of endoparasitic wasps, including the common aphidiine, Aphidius ervi. Immunity to parasitoid attack is thought to involve secondary symbiotic bacteria, the prese...

Mechanisms for inbreeding avoidance should be prevalent in insects that reproduce by arrhenotokous haplodiploidy because of the higher potential production of unviable diploid males in inbred matings. Few studies have focused on mating strategies in insect parasitoids and even less on kinship relationships during mate choice. In this study we tested avoidance of kin as mate in the parasitic was...

Planting Bt cotton in China since 1997 has led to important changes in the natural enemy communities occurring in cotton, however their specific effect on suppressing the cotton aphids (being notorious in conventional cotton ecosystem) has not been fully documented yet. We observed strong evidence for top-down control of the aphid population, e.g. the control efficiency of natural enemies on co...

Edward B. Mondor,* Michelle N. Tremblay and Richard L. Lindroth Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Organisms often exhibit transgenerational phenotypic changes in response to an increased risk of parasitism or predation. Shifts in global atmospheric composition could modify these phenotypic effec...

It has been hypothesized that the success of a biological control introduction is, in part, dependent on the ability of the control agent to become established in its new environment or to its new population of hosts through local adaptation. Despite this, few studies have investigated the influence of the recent coevolutionary history of pest species and natural enemies on the efficacy of biol...

in this research, host stage preference of parasitoid wasp, aphidius matricariae haliday in choice and no-choice tests and functional response of the parasitoid were investigated on common wheat aphid, schizaphis graminum rondani on the alvand cultivar in laboratory conditions at 20, 25 and 30 °c, rh 70 ±10 % and a photoperiod of 16 h l : 8 h d. the maximum mean parasitisms in choice and no-cho...