in the current study some information is presented about the distribution and associations between alfalfa aphids and their parasitoids in different regions in 11 provinces of iran, as well as an identification key to the parasitoids. the main aphids were therioaphis trifolii maculata (buckton) and acyrthosiphon pisum (harris) followed by aphis craccivora koch and acyrthosiphon kondoi shinji. t...

Aphids cause considerable damage to numerous crops all over the world and insecticides are main means of controlling them, despite their detrimental impacts on human environmental health. This study assessed effectiveness parasitoid Aphidius colemani Viereck (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a mixture predatory ladybird beetles, Hippodamia variegata Goeze, Chilocorus calvus Chiccl, Cheilomenes propinq...

Discussions of intraguild predation (IGP) have assumed that the nutritional quality of intraguild (IG) prey is similar to that of any other prey available to the IG predator. It has been suggested therefore that generalist predators do not distinguish between healthy and parasitized aphids and thus function as facultative predators of parasitoids. More recent studies have shown that predators m...

Since typically there are many predators feeding on most herbivores in natural communities, understanding multiple predator effects is critical for both community and applied ecology. Experiments of multiple predator effects on prey populations are extremely demanding, as the number of treatments and the amount of labour associated with these experiments increases exponentially with the number ...

The prevalent way aphids accomplish colony defense against natural enemies is a mutualistic relationship with ants or the occurrence of a specialised soldier caste typical for eusocial aphids, or even both. Despite a group-living life style of those aphid species lacking these defense lines, communal defense against natural predators has not yet been observed there. Individuals of Aphis nerii (...