Introduction Sphaerocoris annulus (F.) is a 1 cm long, distinc­ tively patterned, tropical West African shield bug. Linnavuori [1] places the genus Sphaerocoris in the subfamily Scutellerinae within the family Pen­ tatomidae in the Hemiptera-Heteroptera. Concern­ ing the biology of S. annulus not a great deal seems to be known. Food plants include species of Vernonia (Compositae). The life cycl...

The color and patterning of animal eggs has important consequences for offspring survival. There are examples of between-species and polymorphic differences in egg coloration in birds and amphibians [1-3], as well as cases of birds and insects whose nutritional status or age can cause within-individual variation in egg pigmentation [4-6]. However, no studies to date have demonstrated that indiv...

Lygus antennal protein (LAP) is an olfactory-related protein of the tarnished plant bug Lygus lineolaris (Hemiptera, Heteroptera: Miridae), a hemimetabolous insect. In previous work, a polyclonal antiserum was generated against the N-terminal sequence of LAP; LAP immunoreactivity was strongest in antennae of adult males, but was also present in antennae of adult females and of nymphs. In the cu...

The impact of a zoophytophagous, insect-free artificial diet upon the developmental rate, life table parameters, and fertility table parameters was examined over 11 consecutive generations for domesticated and wild colonies of Podisus maculiventris (Say) (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae). This study showed that the developmental time, preoviposition period, fecundity, and nymphal survival improved in...

Determining when multiple predator species provide better pest suppression than single species is a key step towards developing ecologically-informed biological control strategies. Theory and experiments predict that resource partitioning among functionally different predator species can strengthen prey suppression, because as a group they can access more prey types than functionally redundant ...