The role of temperature is central to both organic evolution and ecological processes. However, how temperature affects selection on body size is unknown. We tested whether small seed beetles (Stator limbatus) have an advantage over large beetles during scramble competition for mates, and whether this advantage varies with temperature. Within lines of beetles artificially selected to be large v...

ground beetles (family carabidae) with more than 40,000 described species worldwide are one of the most important generalist predators in agroecosystems. because of their habit of feeding on agricultural pests and weed seeds, in this study we tried to assess their biodiversity in agroecosystems of azadshahr region, eastern golestan province. samples were collected for some main crops, using pit...

Corn flea beetles, Chaetocnema pulicaria, vector Erwinia stewartii (synamorph Pantoea stewartii), which causes Stewart’s bacterial wilt of corn (Zea mays) (10,11). Flea beetles introduce E. stewartii into plant tissues that are wounded during feeding. Movement of E. stewartii in the vascular system of resistant plants is restricted to within a few centimeters of flea beetle feeding wounds. The ...

Loss in seed yield and therefore decrease in plant fitness due to simultaneous attacks by multiple herbivores is not necessarily additive, as demonstrated in evolutionary studies on wild plants. However, it is not clear how this transfers to crop plants that grow in very different conditions compared to wild plants. Nevertheless, loss in crop seed yield caused by any single pest is most often s...

Research on post-dispersal seed fates has expanded rapidly in the past 20 years. The finding that rodents worldwide scatterhoard many types of seeds and that such scatterhoarding is a second stage of dispersal for some plants has led to the realization that one cannot assume that seed removal is equivalent to seed predation (Forget et al., 1998; Jansen, 2003). Several studies indicate that seco...

Nineteen species of seed-beetles belonging to the subfamily Bruchinae (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) were collected in Xinjiang, China. Of these, the following four were new records for China: Bruchusaffinis Frolich, 1799, Bruchusatomarius L., 1761, Bruchusloti Paykull, 1800 and Kytorhinuskergoati Delobel & Legalov, 2009. We provide an annotated checklist, illustrations and a key to the 19 species.

The white pine cone beetle, Conophthorus coniperda, exhibited dose and enantiospecific responses to alpha-pinene in stands of mature eastern white pine, Pinus strobus, in a seed orchard near Murphy, North Carolina, USA. (-)-alpha-Pinene significantly increased catches of cone beetles to traps baited with (+/-)-trans-pityol. (+)-alpha-Pinene did not increase catches of beetles to pityol-baited t...

The seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus is a significant agricultural pest and increasingly studied model of sexual conflict. Males possess genital spines that increase the transfer of seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) into the female body. As SFPs alter female behaviour and physiology, they are likely to modulate reproduction and sexual conflict in this species. Here, we identified SFPs using pro...

Abstract The chickpea, Cicer arietinum L. (Fabales: Fabaceae), seeds are vulnerable, both in the field and in storage, to attack by seed-beetles. Beetles of the genus Callosobruchus are major storage pests of chickpea crops and cause considerable economic losses. In the present study, a total of 11 chickpea genotypes including five 'kabuli' (Mexican white, Diyar, CA 2969, ILC 8617 and ACC 245) ...