The secreted salivary proteins from two cereal aphid species, Sitobion avenae and Metopolophium dirhodum, were collected from artificial diets and analysed by tandem mass spectrometry. Protein identification was performed by searching MS data against the official protein set from the current pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) genome assembly and revealed 12 and 7 proteins in the saliva of S. avena...

Aphid parasitoids are common in Brazilian wheat fields, and parasitize aphids at the wheat tillering stage. However, there is little information available about when this natural enemy occurs in wheat crops. This study investigated the initial occurrence of aphid parasitoids in four commercial wheat crops in northern Paraná during the 2009 crop season. We installed two Malaise traps at each whe...

"Secondary predation" occurs when one predator feeds on a second predator, which has in turn eaten a target prey. Detection of prey remains within predators using monoclonal antibodies cannot distinguish between primary and secondary predation, potentially leading to quantitative and qualitative food chain errors. We report the first fully replicated experiments to measure secondary predation e...

The insecticidal activity of plant lectins against a wide range of insect species have been intensively studied. Understanding the mechanism of the toxicity of lectins is one of the studied aspects. In the present research, the first step was determine the effect of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) on the development, fecundity and mortality of grain aphid. Next, the effect of PHA lectin on the activit...

Biotransformation of mycotoxins in animals comprises phase I and phase II metabolisation reactions. For the trichothecene deoxynivalenol (DON), several phase II biotransformation reactions have been described resulting in DON-glutathiones, DON-glucuronides and DON-sulfates made by glutathione-S-transferases, uridine-diphosphoglucuronyl transferases and sulfotransferases, respectively. These met...

A 5 yr study in the semiarid wheat production region of eastern Washington documented the relative densities of pest aphids and their natural enemies in cereal production systems using on-farm replicated plots. The systems were reduced-tillage soft white winter wheat (SWW) (Triticum aestivum L.)—summer fallow rotation; no-till soft white spring wheat (SWS)— chemical fallow rotation; continuous ...

The fecundity advantage hypothesis suggests that females with a large body size produce more offspring than smaller females. We tested this hypothesis by exploring the correlations between life-history traits of three aphid species feeding on ten wheat accessions at three levels of analysis with respect to the host plant: overall, inter-accession, and intra-accession. We found that fecundity wa...