Biological control of pest insects by natural enemies may be an effective, cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to synthetic pesticides. The cosmopolitan parasitoid wasp species Bracon brevicornis Wesmael B. hebetor Say (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) use lepidopteran as hosts, including insect pests like Ephestia kuehniella or Ostrinia nubilalis . Here, we compare the reproductive success ...

Eicosanoids are oxygenated metabolites of three C20 polyunsaturated fatty acids, mainly arachidonic acid (AA; 20:4n-6), but also 20:3n-6 and 20:5n-3. Aside from their importance in biomedicine, eicosanoids act in invertebrate biology. Prostaglandins (PGs) influence salt and water transport physiology in insect rectal epithelia and in Malpighian tubules. PGs also influence a few insect behaviors...

The survival of stored product insect natural enemies in wheat treated with spinosad was investigated in laboratory and pilot scale experiments. The predator Xylocoris flavipes (Reuter), the warehouse pirate bug, and the parasitoids Habrobracon hebetor (Say), Theocolax elegans (Westwood), and Anisopteromalus calandrae (Howard) were exposed to wheat treated with aliquots of water or spinosad at ...