To enhance biological control of insect pests in greenhouses, facilities and procedures for mass production of the parasitoids, Eretmocerus sp., Encarsia formosa, and Trichogramma brassicae, and the predator, Aphidoletes aphidimyza were successfully developed in Hengshui, Hebei province, China. Mass production of the aphelinid wasps was achieved by using different plant varieties and host insec...

The ability of aculeate Hymenoptera to utilize wetlands is poorly understood, and descriptions of their nests and developmental stages are largely absent. Here we present results based on our survey of hymenopterans using galls induced by Lipara spp. flies on common reed Phragmites australis in the years 2015-2016. We studied 20,704 galls, of which 9,446 were longitudinally cut and the brood fr...

Several plant characters are known to affect the searching behaviour and parasitization efficiency of Trichogramma spp. (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae). In this study, plant characters contributing to the low Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) egg parasitism levels on pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh) were investigated. The efficiency of T. chilonis on pigeonpea was...

The genus Trichogramma Westwood, 1833 are important biological control agents of especially Lepidoptera pests in all around the world. These tiny wasps can’t be reliably identified owing to their small size and lack definable morphological characters. ITS2 (Internal transcribed spacer 2) sequence-based identification has been performed successfully for years parasitoids Trichogramma. use indige...

Recent studies have revealed that natural enemies can inßuence reproductive success of plants by eliminating their herbivores, thereby reducing damage to photosynthetic or reproductive tissues. Some plant species apparently have evolved “indirect defenses” in response to such top-down selective pressures, producing volatile compounds that are used as cues by natural enemies searching for their ...

Many parasitic wasps that exploit herbivores as their hosts make use of herbivoreinduced plant odours to locate their victims and these wasps often exhibit an ability to learn to associate specific plant-produced odours with the presence of hosts. This associative learning is expected to allow generalist parasitoids to focus on cues that are most reliably associated with current host presence, ...

The cuticle of certain insect body parts can be hardened by the addition of metals, and because niche separation may require morphological adaptations, inclusion of such metals may be linked to life history traits. Here, we analysed the distribution and enrichment of metals in the mandibles and ovipositors of a large family of gall-inducing wasps (Cynipidae, or Gall-Wasps) (plus one gall-induci...

Spalangia endius were collected from fly pupae, primarily house fly and stable fly, from a poultry house in Indiana. Male and female wasps did not differ within and across host species in host size usage. Also, despite stable fly pupae being significantly smaller than house fly pupae, the proportion of male wasps emerging from the two host species was similar. __________________________________...

wolbachia is an intracellular endosymbiont, which can induce thelytokous parthenogenesis in trichogramma egg parasitoids with the infected females producing daughters without any mating. with regard to the usual transfer of wolbachia which is vertical from the mother to her offspring through the cytoplasm of eggs, this manipulation of host’s reproduction can enhance its transmission to future g...

Oak galls are spectacular extended phenotypes of gallwasp genes in host oak tissues and have evolved complex morphologies that serve, in part, to exclude parasitoid natural enemies.Parasitoids and their insect herbivore hosts have coevolved to produce diverse communities comprising about a third of all animal species. The factors structuring these communities, however, remain poorly understood....