Spatial heterogeneity within individual host trees is often overlooked in surveys of phytophagous arthropod abundance and distribution. The armored scale Aulacaspis yasumatsui is controlled by the predator Rhyzobius lophanthae to a greater degree on leaves at 75-cm height than on leaves at ground level within its host tree Cycas micronesica. The direct influence of elevation on the predator ind...

The difficulties specialized phytophagous insects face in finding habitats with an appropriate host should constrain their dispersal. Within the concept of metacommunities, this leads to the prediction that host-plant specialists should sort into local assemblages according to the local environmental conditions, i.e. habitat conditions, whereas assemblages of host-plant generalists should depen...

Bacteria in the genus Rickettsia, best known as vertebrate pathogens vectored by blood-feeding arthropods, can also be found in phytophagous insects. The presence of closely related bacterial symbionts in evolutionarily distant arthropod hosts presupposes a means of horizontal transmission, but no mechanism for this transmission has been described. Using a combination of experiments with live i...

In gregarious insects, groups commonly originate from females laying eggs in masses and feeding are established as soon larvae hatch. Some group-living insect species may aggregate beyond the individual parent level, such that offspring two or more egg develop within a common resource. Here we show aggregative oviposition can vary with population density at possibly be an important factor outbr...

Jatropha curcas has a high biofuel oil content, which could replace polluting fuels, and has great potential for large scale monoculture cultivation in the conventional system. We explored the occurrence, spatial distribution and the functional response of the main phytophagous species of this plant and their natural enemies to explore the potential for conservative biological control. We began...