Cotesia vestalis is an endoparasitoid of larval stages of Plutella xylostella, the diamondback moth. For successful parasitization, this parasitoid injects a polydnavirus into its host during oviposition. Here we isolated two genes, which we named CvBV1 and CvBV2. CvBV1 was located on segment CvBV-S5 with a size of 790 bp, while CvBV2 was located on segment CvBV-S51 with a size of 459 bp. A gen...

Intra-guild predation (IGP) is an important phenomenon structuring ecological communities and affects the success of biological control. Here we show that parasitism by the koinobiont wasp Cotesia vestalis is associated with behavioural changes in its larval host (diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella) that reduce risk of IGP. Compared with unparasitised caterpillars, parasitised P. xylostella ...