BACKGROUND Lacewings (insect order Neuroptera), known in the fossil record since the Early Permian, were most diverse in the Mesozoic. A dramatic variety of forms ranged in that time from large butterfly-like Kalligrammatidae to minute two-winged Dipteromantispidae. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We describe the intriguing new neuropteran family Parakseneuridae fam. nov. with three new genera and 15 new ...

Toxic plants with sequestering specialists are presented with a problem because plant derived toxins protect herbivores against natural enemies. It has been suggested that early induction of toxins and later relaxation of these defenses may help the plant resolve this problem because neonate caterpillars incur the physiological cost of dealing with toxins in early life, but are denied toxins wh...

Sucking pests of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L), such as thrips, or Thrips tabaci Lindeman, and jassid, Amrasca biguttula Ishida, are among the most threatening insect to young plants in Pakistan. New chemical insecticides have been trialed control their damage commercial fields. Formulations that show good suppression these pest’s populations, while sparing bio-controlling agents, always prefer...

Tetranychus kanzawai Kishida and Panonychus citri (McGregor) are two major acarine pests of the principal papaya variety in Taiwan, and they often co-occur in the same papaya screenhouses. This study measured prey acceptability, foraging schedule, short-term consumption rate, and handling time of larvae of a domesticated line of the green lacewing, Mallada basalis (Walker), in no-choice tests w...

In 1999 we released Pseudoscymnus tsugae on 30 adelgid-infested hemlock trees in landscapes at four locations in Rhode Island in an attempt to control the hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelges tsugae. Small, medium, and large trees at these locations received varying numbers of predators (ranging from 0 to 500 per tree) from mid-May to early June. Beat samples for P. tsugae taken on July 1 found 263 ...