1. The strength of interaction between the specialist parasitoid Cotesia melitaearum and the host butterfly Melitaea cinxia is influenced by the coincidence of the adult stage of the parasitoid with the larval stage of the host. 2. We show that there is great variation in this developmental synchrony among local populations and among years, ranging from complete synchrony to complete asynchrony...

The order Hymenoptera currently includes the impressive number of more than 115000 known species. The tropical hymenopteran fauna, however, is poorly known and this number probably represents just a small fraction of the real richness of the group. A great part of the species within Hymenoptera is composed of parasitoids, animals that exploit other organisms to death in order to acquire the foo...

Parasitoids are among the most important natural enemies of insects in many environments. Acyrthosiphon pisum, the pea aphid, is a common pest of the leguminous crops in temperate regions. Pea aphids are frequently attacked by a range of endoparasitic wasps, including the common aphidiine, Aphidius ervi. Immunity to parasitoid attack is thought to involve secondary symbiotic bacteria, the prese...

The effects of host age and parasitoid female age on the occurrence of 'Pseudoparasitism', using the Spodoptera littoralis-Microplitis rufiventris host-parasitoid system were investigated. The first four larval instars of the host are not equally suitable for parasitoid development. The proportion of pseudoparasitized hosts significantly increases when: (1) the age of the female parasitoid incr...

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In the two decades since Janzen described how to be a fig, more than 200 papers have appeared on fig wasps (Agaonidae) and their host plants (Ficus spp., Moraceae). Fig pollination is now widely regarded as a model system for the study of coevolved mutualism, and earlier reviews have focused on the evolution of resource conflicts between pollinating fig wasps, their hosts, and their parasites. ...

The biological control potential of parasitic wasps in the field is expected to increase with the provisioning of sugar sources, which increase longevity and replenish carbohydrate reserves. Apanteles aristoteliae is an important parasitoid of Argyrotaenia franciscana, the orange tortrix, an economic pest in fruit crops. In the present study, the effect of sugar diet on the physiological status...

during the study of natural enemies of insect pests of forest trees and shrubs in arasbaran forest of iranian province of east azarbaijan, a number of larvae of yponomeuta evonymella l. were collected on wild cherry trees. the specimens were reared in the laboratory, where parasitoid wasps of the family ichneumonidae emerged and later identified as agrypon canaliculatum (ratzeburg, 1844). the i...

Finding a spot for her babies to grow up can be perilous for a female fruit fly. The wrong choice can sentence most of them to death at the "hands" of another insect mother, a wasp that is likewise searching for a nursery for her young (Fig 1). Wasps in the genus Leptopilina, which are the main parasitoids of Drosophila, lay their eggs in up to 80% of fruit fly larvae in the wild. As the wasp l...

Polyembryony has evolved independently in four families of parasitoid wasps. We review three main hypotheses for the selective forces favouring this developmental mode in parasitoids: polyembryony (i) reduces the costs of egg limitation; (ii) reduces the genetic conflict among offspring; and (iii) allows offspring to adjust their numbers to the quality of the host. Using comparative data and ve...