An improved technique was developed to assay the toxicity of insecticides against aphids using an artificial diet. The susceptibility of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris) (Hemiptera: Aphidoidea) was determined for a selection of novel biorational insecticides, each representing a novel mode of action. Flonicamid, a novel systemic insecticide with selective activity as feeding blocker a...

Viral insect-borne plant pathogens have devastating impacts in agroecosystems. Vector-borne are often transmitted by generalist insects that move between non-crop and crop hosts. Insect vectors can wide diet breadths, but it is unknown which hosts serve as pathogen reservoirs host harbours the highest density of vectors. In Pacific Northwest USA, pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) a key virus vect...

In the last decade, influence of microbial symbionts on ecological and physiological traits their hosts has been increasingly recognized. However, most these effects have revealed under laboratory conditions, which oversimplifies complexity factors involved in dynamics symbiotic associations nature. The pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum , forms a complex plant-adapted biotypes, strongly differ pre...

Sieve tubes serve as transport conduits for photo-assimilates and other resources in angiosperms and are profitable targets for piercing-sucking insects such as aphids. Sieve-tube sap also contains significant amounts of proteins with diverse functions, for example in signalling, metabolism, and defence. The identification of salivary proteases in Acyrthosiphon pisum led to the hypothesis that ...

Wildflower strips and biodiversity-friendly management are promoted as ways of enhancing biodiversity natural pest control in agroecosystems. Their efficacy for providing resources shelters enemies has been well studied, but little is known about how wildflower strip mediated by local field landscape composition. In this study, we explored the effects floral perennial flower on faba bean aphids...

Vertically transmitted micro-organisms can increase in frequency in host populations by providing net benefits to hosts. While laboratory studies have identified diverse beneficial effects conferred by inherited symbionts of insects, they have not explicitly examined the population dynamics of mutualist symbiont infection within populations. In the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, the inherited ...

The molecular basis of circadian clocks is highly evolutionarily conserved and has been best characterized in Drosophila and mouse. Analysis of the Acyrthosiphon pisum genome revealed the presence of orthologs of the following genes constituting the core of the circadian clock in Drosophila: period (per), timeless (tim), Clock, cycle, vrille, and Pdp1. However, the presence in A. pisum of ortho...

Nine proteins secreted in the saliva of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum were identified by a proteomics approach using GE-LC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS, with reference to EST and genomic sequence data for A. pisum. Four proteins were identified by their sequences: a homolog of angiotensin-converting enzyme (an M2 metalloprotease), an M1 zinc-dependant metalloprotease, a glucose-methanol-choline (GMC)...