The present paper deals with a total of 26 species mites under 10 families, 17 genera and 3 orders as well insects 5 9 orders, collected from some floricultural leafy ornamental plants in Howrah Purba Medinipur districts West Bengal. It may be mentioned here that these two are the largest producers plants. Among mites, there 14 4 families 8 which belong to phytophagous group, 7 predatory group ...

Unlike most animals, insects lack the capacity to synthesize sterols that are required in lipid biostructures, as precursors to important steroid hormones and as regulators of developmental processes. Therefore insects must acquire sterols from their diet. Hundreds of different sterols have been identified and the review starts by documenting the occurrence of sterols in different insect foods....

For nearly 400 million years, insects and plants have been embattled in an evolutionary arms race. Insects have developed diverse feeding strategies and behaviors in an effort to circumvent and overcome an extensive collection of plant defense tactics. Sap-sucking insects often inject saliva into hosts plants, which contains a suite of effector proteins and even microbial communities that can a...

Owing to the great variability in ionic composition of insect haemolymph (Bone", 1944; Duchateau, Florkin & Leclerq, 1953; Sutcliffe, 1963), it is probably desirable to use haemolymph itself as an experimental medium whenever this is possible. In the present studies of proprioception in Anthercea pernyi the long time spent in dissection and the necessity for aeration rendered the use of a simpl...

Estimates of the global number of arthropod species range from 2 million to more than 30 million species. One of the most critical assumptions affecting the higher of these estimates is the assumed magnitude of host specificity of phytophagous insects, which varies considerably. Difficulties in estimating this value are caused by both lack of satisfactory data sets and lack of methods for its o...

A. assamensis is a phytophagous Lepidoptera from Northeast India reared on host trees of Lauraceae family for its characteristic cocoon silk. Source of these cocoons are domesticated farm stocks that crash frequently and/or wild insect populations that provide new cultures. The need to reduce dependence on wild populations for cocoons necessitates assessment of genetic diversity in cultivated a...

Gall wasps, or cynipids, form the second largest radiation of galling insects with more than 1300 described species. According to current views, the first cynipids were phytophagous and developed in herb stems of the Asteraceae without modifying plant growth or development. The first galls were supposedly multichambered stem swellings, and subsequent trends involved increase in gall complexity ...

The cell wall in plants offers protection against invading organisms and is mainly composed of the polysaccharides pectin, cellulose, and hemicellulose, which can be degraded by plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs). Such enzymes are often synthesized by free living microorganisms or endosymbionts that live in the gut of some animals, including certain phytophagous insects. Thus, the abili...