The extent of damage to crop plants from pest insects depends on the foraging behaviour of the insect's feeding stage. Little is known, however, about the genetic and molecular bases of foraging behaviour in phytophagous pest insects. The foraging gene (for), a candidate gene encoding a PKG-I, has an evolutionarily conserved function in feeding strategies. Until now, for had never been studied ...

Ferns and lycophytes are the second third largest lineages of vascular plants, yet our understanding their interactions with phytophagous insects is very limited. In this study, we reviewed herbivorous insects, feeding habits host preferences on these two plant groups, searched for any evidence coevolution, discussed possible biases current knowledge fern–insect interactions. We analyzed 2318 r...

*Correspondence: Jonas M. Bengtsson, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius v. 18b, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: jonas.bengtsson@ zoologi.su.se Plant volatiles mediate host discrimination and host finding in phytophagous insects. Understanding how insects recognize these signals is a current challenge in chemical ecology research. Pear ester, ethyl (E,Z )-2,4-decadien...

It is generally assumed that larval insects allow the gut to clear of all food prior to each molt (Waldbauer, 1968; Kogan, 1986; Ayres & MacLean, 1987). This premise has been important in the standardization of insect starting weights in growth experiments; the food in feeding larvae may account for up to 50 ~o of the dry weight of phytophagous insects (Wightman, 1981; Kogan, 1986). The only pu...

Host plant switching is common among phytophagous insects. Once optimal food sources have been depleted, immature insects may resort to use of suboptimal hosts in order to complete their development. Such host switching may have dramatic consequences for insect fitness. Here we investigate the effects of host switching in larvae of the viburnum leaf beetle, Pyrrhalta viburni, an invasive landsc...

Over the years, extensive use of commercially available synthetic pesticides against phytophagous insects has led to their bioaccumulation in the environment causing increased resistance and reduction in soil biodiversity. Further, 90% of the applied pesticides enter the various environmental resources as a result of run-off, exposing the farmers as well as consumers of the agricultural produce...