searching efficiency and handling time are two major components of functional response and are usually used to evaluate effectiveness of natural enemies. the effect of different foraging periods on the functional response of larval aphidoletes aphidimyza (rondani) (dip.: cecidomyiidae) feeding on third instar nymphs of aphis craccivora was studied. the experiment was conducted in terms of time-...

searching efficiency (a') (attack rate) and handling time are two major components of natural enemies’ functional response and are usually used to evaluate their effectiveness. the age-specific searching efficiency of aphidoletes aphidimyza (rondani) was studied during its larval stage. the experiment was conducted in terms of age-specific functional response to the varying density (5, 1...

intraguild predation (igp) occurs when one predator species consumes another predator species with whom it also competes for shared prey. we studied igp between different stages of hippodamia variegata and aphidoletes aphidimyza in absence and presence of extraguild prey (aphis gossypii) in petri dish arena. in the absence of extraguild prey all stages of h. variegata (larva1, 2, 3, 4, female a...

We integrated a natural enemy survey of the broader landscape into a more traditional survey for Aphis glycines Matsumura (Hemiptera: Aphididae), parasitoids and predatory flies on soybean using A. glycines-infested soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr., placed in cropped and noncropped plant systems to complement visual field observations. Across three sites and 5 yr, 18 parasitoids and predatory fl...

The aphidophagous midge Aphidoletes aphidimyza (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) is used in biological control programs against aphids in many crops. Short-term trials with this natural enemy demonstrated that that females prefer to oviposit among aphids colonizing the new growth of plants, leading to differential attack rates for aphid species that differ in their within-plant distributions. Thus, we h...