Ants often form mutualistic interactions with aphids, soliciting honeydew in return for protective services. Under certain circumstances, however, ants will prey upon aphids. In addition, in the presence of ants aphids may increase the quantity or quality of honeydew produced, which is costly. Through these mechanisms, ant attendance can reduce aphid colony growth rates. However, it is unknown ...

the prey suitability for generalist predators is an important feature for efficient mass rearing and ipm. the green lacewing, chrysoperla carnea (stephens) is a polyphagous predator attacking several pests on various crops. this experiment was conducted under laboratory conditions at 25 ± 2 °c, 60 ± 5% r. h. and a photoperiod of 16l: 8d h. the effects of different prey species were investigated...

Aphids are a worldwide pest and an important model in ecology and evolution. Little is known, however, about the genetic structure of their colonies at a microgeographic level. For example, it remains largely unknown whether most species form monoclonal or polyclonal colonies. Here, we present the first detailed study on levels of clonal mixing in a nonsocial facultative ant mutualist, the blac...

black bean aphid is widely distributed in the world. it has several hosts from weeds and cultivated plants. this aphid passes the winter as egg on some permanent weeds, box tree and etc. young wingless hatches from the eggs in the spring and the winged aphids after appearance migrate to seed beet fields. after producing some generations, they fly to the various summer hosts such as bean, sugar ...

Parasitoid host selection behaviour has been extensively studied in experimentally simplified tritrophic systems formed by one single food chain (one plant, one herbivore and one parasitoid species). The "Mother knows best" hypothesis predicts that the preference for a plant-host complex should be positively correlated with plant quality for offspring performance. We studied the host selection ...