Codling moth is a notorious fruit-boring pest that has extended its original distribution from the natural apple forests of Central Asia to cover all apple growing regions of the world. Having been discovered in California as early as 1872, codling moth has continued to be the dominant pest of apple, pear and walnut production causing extensive damage in the absence of insecticide treatment. In...

Monitoring Oobius agrili Zhang and Huang (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae), an egg parasitoid being released for biological control of emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is challenging due to its small size the cryptic placement host eggs. We compared four O. recovery methods: 1) rearing adults from bark (bark rearing); 2) sifting parasitized eggs sifting)...

Research on interspecific competitive interactions among insect parasitoids has often been characterized by laboratory studies in which host insects are exposed to female parasitoids of different species in various sequences and combinations. In the last years, an increasing number of studies have investigated interspecific interactions under field and semi-field conditions although just a few ...

Allochrony that is reproductive isolation by time may further lead to divergence of reproductive adaptive traits in response to different environmental pressures over time. A unique "summer" population of the pine processionary moth Thaumetopoea pityocampa, reproductively isolated from the typical winter populations by allochronic differentiation, is here analyzed. This allochronically shifted ...

Homalodisca coagulata (Say) (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) eggs 1–10 days of age were exposed to Gonatocerus ashmeadi Girault, Gonatocerus triguttatus Girault, and Gonatocerus fasciatus Girault (all Hymenoptera: Mymaridae) in no choice laboratory trials to investigate egg age utilization and to determine which egg ages are vulnerable to attack by these three parasitoids. The H. coagulata egg ages th...