More than half of the worldwide expenditure on agrochemicals was devoted to insecticides in an effort to combat over half a million different herbivorous insect species1}. Despite this, 15% of the crops planted are lost to feeding insects and other pests2). The cost of this damage and its effect on agriculture has increased the demand for more effective crop protection agents. For manyyears, pe...

speciation Junfeng Liu, De-Xing Zhang* and ZihengYang* State Key Laboratory of IntegratedManagement of Pest Insects andRodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of theChinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; National Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Center for...

Anticarsia gemmatalis (velvetbean caterpillar) and Chrysodeixis includens (soybean looper, formerly named Pseudoplusia includens) are two important defoliating insects of soybeans. Both lepidopteran pests are controlled mainly with synthetic insecticides. Alternative control strategies, such as biopesticides based on the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins or transgenic plants expressing Bt toxi...

This year, 30 million acres of the corn, cotton, and potatoes planted in the United States will have been genetically engineered to produce an endotoxin normally found in the microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a self-contained pesticide that will be toxic only to target insects. Transgenic pest-resistant crops are a cost-effective alternative to chemical pesticides, and may offer a way to hel...

Beauveria bassiana , an entomogenous fungus used for the biological control of pest insects, comprises a globally-distributed species complex of regionally endemic lineages. In order to study the population genetics of B . bassiana , detail species boundaries, conduct ecological studies of natural populations and track fates of experimentally-released strains, sensitive genetic markers are requ...

Harmful insects include pests of crops and storage goods, and vectors of human and animal diseases. Throughout their history, humans have been fighting them using diverse methods. The fairly recent development of synthetic chemical insecticides promised efficient crop and health protection at a relatively low cost. However, the negative effects of those insecticides on human health and the envi...

The broad variation in host use among polyphagous insects is well documented but still poorly understood. In numerous pest insects, the proximate mechanisms responsible for oviposition preference plants remain to be elucidated. invasive crop pest, Drosophila suzukii, attacks a wide range of fruits. Females prefer ovipositing on particular fruit media (blackberry, cherry, blackcurrant) that are ...

two-spotted spider mite, tetranychus urticae koch (acari: tetranychidae), is one of the most injurious pests of fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants worldwide, both outdoor and indoors. currently the main method of control of this pest is through application of pesticides which is mostly accompanied by the resistance of the pest against pesticide(s). the resurgence of resistant mite populat...

BACKGROUND Passenger ships provide conditions suitable for the survival and growth of pest populations. Arthropods and rodents can gain access directly from the ships' open spaces, can be carried in shiploads, or can be found on humans or animals as ectoparasites. Vectors on board ships may contaminate stored foods, transmit illness on board, or, introduce diseases in new areas. Pest species, s...

Preventing a pest population from damaging an agricultural crop and, at the same time, preventing the development of pesticide resistance is a major challenge in crop protection. Understanding how farming practices and environmental factors interact with pest characteristics to influence the spread of resistance is a difficult and complex task. It is extremely challenging to investigate such in...