Side Effects of Insecticides on Leaf?Miners and Gall?Inducers Depend on Species Ecological Traits and Competition with Leaf?Chewers

Internal feeding is considered to shield sessile herbivorous insects from exposure nonsystemic insecticides aerially sprayed against forest defoliators, although this has not been tested. It is, however, established that leaf damage caused by defoliators affects the survivorship and oviposition behavior of herbivores. Thus ecology competition may mediate nontarget effects on these insects. We tested ecological sensitivity 3 guilds herbivores (upper-surface leaf-miners, lower-surface gall-inducers) lipophilic larvicides diflubenzuron tebufenozide applied either at operational rates (12 g active ingredient [a.i.]/ha 69.6 [a.i.]/ha, respectively) or maximum legal (60 180 respectively), in German oak forests. Diflubenzuron affected leaf-miners different life stages depending their position but had no effect gall-inducers. Tebufenozide showed a similar, significant, pattern did affect By reducing incidence chewing leaves, both offset negative leaf-miner The net outcome insecticide treatment was positive for avoiding exposure, upper-surface leaf-miners. Exposure situ can be mediated subtle differences species biology interactions, with potential implications organisms usually safe risk assessment studies. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;00:1–17. © 2020 Authors. Environmental Toxicology Chemistry published Wiley Periodicals LLC behalf SETAC.