BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The use of insecticides to eliminate mosquito larvae from ground pools may disrupt atural predator-induced control of mosquito larvae. Detrimental effects on predators may be directly from toxicity or by eliminating prey organisms. Identifying the principal predators responsible for mosquito suppression is needed to select non-target indicator species for insecticide stu...

Abstract Background The ladybird beetle Cryptolaemus montrouzieri Mulsant, 1853 (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) is used worldwide as a biological control agent. It predator of various mealybug pests, but it also feeds on alternative prey and can be reared artificial diets. Relatively little known about the underlying genetic adaptations its feeding habits. Results We report first high-quality genom...

Positive species interactions have the potential to strongly influence the structure and dynamics of ecological communities, yet surprisingly few studies have documented their general importance. We tested the hypothesis that the mutualistic association between fire ants and aphids enhances the impact of fire ants on the herbivorous and predaceous arthropod community of cotton. We found that th...

The paradise fish, a small insectivore, coinhabits marshes of Southeast Asia with several predator fish species. Its ability to recognize and avoid harmful fish may depend upon both genetic factors and experience. Here we demonstrate genetic variability between the 20-day-old larvae of two inbred strains of paradise fish (P and S) in predator exploration and avoidance, using predator models. We...

Competition and predation alter individual traits of organisms, and these effects can scale-up to have consequences on community structure and dynamics. The relative importance of competition and predation will depend largely on the local assemblage of species, the type of predators, or the degree of niche segregation. We experimentally investigated the interplay of competition and predation on...

Factors predicting the outcome of predator invasions on native prey communities are critical to our understanding of invasion ecology. Here, we tested whether background level of risk affected the survival of prey to novel predators, both native and invasive, predicting that high-risk environments would better prepare prey for invasions. We used naïve woodfrog as our prey and exposed them to a ...

the predator-prey model with stage structure for predator is generalized in the context of ecoepidemiology, where the prey population is infected by a microparasite and the predator completely avoids consuming the infected prey. the intraspecific competition of infected prey is considered. all the equilibria are characterized and the existence of a hopf bifurcation at the coexistence equilibriu...

here, a predator-prey model with hassell-varley type functional responses is studied. some sufficient conditions are obtained for the permanence and global asymptotic stability of the system by using comparison theorem and constructing a suitable lyapunov functional. moreover, an example is illustrated to verify the results by simulation.