Plants can vary substantially among species in morphological and physiological traits that influence their resistance to herbivores and their quality for herbivore growth and development. Seeds of the desert trees Cercidium floridum and C. microphyllum vary within and among populations in their resistance to, and suitability for, growth and development of larvae of the seed beetle, Stator limba...

Natural enemies, especially host-specific enemies, are hypothesised to facilitate the coexistence of plant species by disproportionately inflicting more damage at increasing host abundance. However, few studies have assessed such Janzen-Connell mechanisms on a scale relevant for coexistence and no study has evaluated potential top-down influences on the specialized pests. We quantified seed pre...

Introduction Annual organic soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] production in the U.S. has risen to more than 150,000 acres (USDA-AMS, 2010). Critical challenges associated with organic soybean production include weed control and bean leaf beetles (Cerotoma trifurcata Förster) – primarily as vectors for the seed-staining bean pod mottle virus (BPMV) and for providing sites for other seed-staining ...

Abstract In a semi-field net cage experiment set up in three growing seasons (2015–2018) at Julius-Kühn Institute Braunschweig, Germany, the influence of different release times adult cabbage stem flea beetles, Psylliodes chrysocephala (early September, mid-September, early October) and beetle densities (6.7, 13.3 20 beetles/m 2 ) on reproduction damage potential winter oil seed rape was invest...

Introduction Annual organic soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] production in the U.S. has risen to more than 150,000 acres (USDA-ERS, 2005). Critical challenges associated with organic soybean production include weed control and bean leaf beetles (Cerotoma trifurcata Förster) – primarily as vectors for the seed-staining bean pod mottle virus (BPMV) and for providing sites for other seed-staining ...

Meeting rising demand for oil palm whilst minimizing the loss of tropical biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions is a core conservation challenge. One potential solution focusing expansion high-yielding crops on presently low-yielding farmlands alongside protecting nearby forests that can enhance provision functions. A key question how this would impact invertebrate functional diversit...

Several insect taxa are associated with intracellular symbionts that provision limiting nutrients to their hosts. Such tightly integrated symbioses are especially common in insects feeding on nutritionally challenging diets like phloem sap or vertebrate blood, but also occur in seed-eating and omnivorous taxa. Here, we characterize an intracellular symbiosis in pollen-feeding beetles of the gen...