Dinoflagellate blooms are natural phenomena that often occur in coastal areas, which in addition to their large number of nutrient-rich sites are characterized by highly restricted hydrodynamics within bays, marinas, enclosed beaches, and harbors. In these areas, massive proliferations of dinoflagellates have harmful effects on humans and the ecosystem. However, the high cell density reached du...

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 ...

KURIS, A. M., 1973. Biological control: implications of the analogy between the trophic interactions of insect pest-parasitoid and snail-trematode systems. Experimental Parasitology 33, 365-379. An analogy between the tropic interactions of insect pest-hymenopterous parasitoid and snail-larval trematode systems is proposed. The goal of most agricultural pest management programs is increase in p...

Parasitism can influence many aspects of the host’s behaviour and physiology, which in turn can have a profound impact on their population and evolutionary ecology. In many host parasite interactions there is often a time lag between infection and the death of the host, yet little is known, experimentally or theoretically, about the effects that intra-class competition between parasitised and u...

Background and Purpose: Dryocosmus kuriphilus is a globally invasive insect pest, spreading very quickly in new habitats and making serious damage to sweet chestnut forests in Croatia and in several other European countries. Indigenous parasitoid species trophically associated with oak gallwasps have adapted to this new host but cannot effectively regulate its population density. Classical biol...

Plant chemical defenses can negatively affect insect herbivore fitness, but they can also decrease herbivore palatability to predators or decrease parasitoid fitness, potentially changing selective pressures on both plant investment in production of chemical defenses and host feeding behavior. Larvae of the fern moth Herpetogramma theseusalis live in and feed upon leaf shelters of their own con...

In this paper, we formulate a three-species ecological community model consisting of two aphid species (Acyrthosiphon pisum and Megoura viciae) and a specialist parasitoid (Aphidius ervi) that attacks only one of the aphids (A pisum). The model incorporates both density-mediated and trait-mediated host-parasitoid interactions. Our analysis shows that the model possesses much richer and more rea...

How global warming will affect insect parasitoids and their role as natural enemies of insect pests is difficult to assess within a short period of time. Considering that elevation gradients can be used as analogues for global warming, we carried out meta-analyses of 27 correlations between parasitoid richness and elevation and 140 correlations between parasitism rate and elevation in natural a...

Choice of livestock bedding has been shown to affect density of filth fly maggots. Here, laboratory experiments indicate that bedding type can also affect natural enemies of the flies, specifically the parasitoid wasps Spalangia endius Walker and Urolepis rufipes (Ashmead) (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) parasitizing a natural host, the house fly Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae). For both par...