the family of pteromalidae (hym: chalcidoidea) is one of the largest families of parasitic wasp. members of this family wasp comprise of important natural enemies of many harmful insects in major insect orders such as coleoptera, diptera, lepidoptera, hymenoptera and homoptera; therefore they have an important role in biological control of agricultural pests. the chalcid wasps belonging to this...

While the effects of carcass decomposition on microorganisms have been demonstrated in recent years, little is known of how this impacts necrophagous insects. A common assumption is that insects that exploit carcasses are exposed to a high density of potentially harmful microorganisms, but no field data have so far validated this. Necrophagous beetles such as the Scarabaeinae have complex nesti...

We investigated the lethal effects of visible light on insects by using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The toxic effects of ultraviolet (UV) light, particularly shortwave (i.e., UVB and UVC) light, on organisms are well known. However, the effects of irradiation with visible light remain unclear, although shorter wavelengths are known to be more lethal. Irradiation with visible light is not thou...

Cucurbit crops host a range of serious sap-sucking insect pests, including silverleaf whitefly (SLW) and aphids, which potentially represent considerable risk to the Australian horticulture industry. These pests are extremely polyphagous with a wide host range. Chemical control is made difficult due to resistance and pollution, and other side-effects are associated with insecticide use. Consequ...

Our purpose is to develop a classification system for the automatic detection of harmful insects in greenhouse plants. This paper deals with evaluation of three feature extraction techniques for classification of insects. Feature extraction methods used are Gabor Filters, Pyramidal Histogram of Gradients and color data. The aim of the classification machine apart from achieving high degree of a...

A publication reporting the harmful effects on the monarch butterfly of maize genetically modified to express insecticidal delta-endotoxins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) caused much public interest. A series of ecologically based studies were subsequently carried out to evaluate rigorously the impact of pollen from such crops and to quantify the risks. The results demonstr...

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic behaviors of a Holling II two-prey one-predator system with impulsive effect concerning biological control and chemical control strategy-periodic releasing natural enemies and spraying pesticide at different fixed moment. By using the Floquet theory of linear periodic impulsive equation and small-amplitude perturbation method, we show that there exists ...

Environmental contamination research has been quite interesting in bioindicators recently. The basic objective of bioindicator is to find species that can reliably detect environmental disturbances and demonstrate how those affect other or biodiversity as a whole. Since they frequently come into contact with the harmful substances found soil, water, air, insects are particularly valuable for ev...

Background The use of entomopathogenic bacteria to control harmful insects has increased the interest and researches about spore forming bacteria. Species from genus Bacillus are described as rod-shaped cells, sometimes in chains, and mostly capable of producing endospore. Although hundreds of bacteria species are known to be associated with insects, there is only a few which can be used as bio...