Parasitoid wasps of the order Hymenoptera, the most diverse groups of animals, are important natural enemies of arthropod hosts in natural ecosystems and can be used in biological control. To date, only one neuropeptidome of a parasitoid wasp, Nasonia vitripennis, has been identified. This study aimed to identify more neuropeptides of parasitoid wasps, by using a well-established workflow that ...

We investigated the effect of mutual interference on the attack efficiency and the rate of successful parasitism on the parasitoid Spalangia cameroni (Perkins) attacking pupae of the stable fly Stomoxys calcitrans (L.). Female parasitoids (2, 4, 8, 16, or 32) were exposed to 100 fly pupae during 24 h. The number of pupae that were attacked and the number successfully parasitized increased with ...

There is an emerging consensus that parasitoids are limited by the number of eggs which they can lay as well as the amount of time they can search for their hosts. Since egg limitation tends to destabilize host-parasitoid dynamics, successful control of insect pests by parasitoids requires additional stabilizing mechanisms such as heterogeneity in the distribution of parasitoid attacks and host...

Defences against parasites are typically associated with costs to the host that contribute to the maintenance of variation in resistance. This also applies to the defence provided by the facultative bacterial endosymbiont Hamiltonella defensa, which protects its aphid hosts against parasitoid wasps while imposing life-history costs. To investigate the cost-benefit relationship within protected ...

Immune defense is energetically costly, and thus an effective response requires metabolic adaptation of the organism to reallocate energy from storage, growth, and development towards the immune system. We employ the natural infection of Drosophila with a parasitoid wasp to study energy regulation during immune response. To combat the invasion, the host must produce specialized immune cells (la...

At maturity, the endoparasitoid larvae of several subfamilies of the Braconidae have to emerge from inside of the host to pupate. Although the hosts hormonal milieu and the timing of larval parasitoid emergence have been studied, no report has yet focused on the physiological state of the host in connection with the emergence behavior of endoparasitoids. We investigated the mechanism of larval ...

Host insects are either susceptible or resistant to parasitoids, where resistant hosts express immunity factors and compatible parasitoids express virulence factors that may reveal the manipulation of susceptible hosts. Using proteomics we compared responses of the same host, the aphid Macrosiphum euphorbiae, challenged by a well-adapted parasitoid Aphidius nigripes or by a less adapted relativ...

The interactions between Drosophila melanogaster and the parasitoid wasps that infect species provide an important model for understanding host–parasite relationships. Following infection, D. larvae mount a response in which immune cells (hemocytes) form capsule around wasp egg, then melanizes, leading to death of parasitoid. Previous studies have found host hemocyte load; number hemocytes avai...

The effects of biotic and abiotic factors on stem borer parasitoid diversity, abundance, and parasitism were studied in cultivated and natural habitats in four agroecological zones in Kenya. Comparing habitat types, we found partial support for the "natural enemy" hypothesis, whereby, across all localities, parasitoid diversity was higher in more diverse host plant communities in natural habita...