Insects, Volume 10, Issue 7

Two sibling weevil species, Pissodes strobi Peck and P. nemorensis Germar (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), can form reduced-fitness hybrids in the laboratory, but neither their premating isolation mechanisms nor mating behaviors are well-understood. Cuti...

Ants and termites are used as bioindicators in many ecosystems. Little knowledge is available about them in Togo, especially ants. This study aimed to find out how ants and termites could be used to assess the restoration of former agricultural land....

Urban agriculture is widely practiced throughout the world. Urban agriculture practitioners have diverse motivations and circumstances, but one problem is ubiquitous across all regions: insect pests. Many urban farmers and gardeners either choose to,...

Pollen is important not only for pollination and fertilization of plants, but also for colony development of bee pollinators. Anther dehiscence determines the available pollen that can be collected by foragers. In China, honeybees and bumblebees are...

Insects can be effective vectors of plant diseases and this may result in billions of dollars in lost agricultural productivity. New, emerging or introduced diseases will continue to cause extensive damage in afflicted areas. Understanding how the ve...

The sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is a pest of greenhouse-grown tomato. Restrictions on insecticides in enclosed structures and the presence of commercial pollinators limit the options for the chemical control of whiteflies in greenhouses, in...

Exclusion nets have been used successfully to protect fruit from insect pests of apples under various conditions, but the effect of each particular netting system on the plant itself has rarely been investigated. In this study, a complete exclusion s...

Competition is a fundamental process in ecology and helps to determine dominance hierarchies. Competition and dominance hierarchies have been little investigated in wood-eating termites, despite the necessary traits of similar resources, and showing...

The parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Ashmead) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is increasingly being used in integrated pest management (IPM) programs as a biological control agent in order to suppress tephritid fruit flies of economic importance. I...

When confronted with an adaptive radiation, considerable evidence is needed to resolve the evolutionary relationships of these closely related lineages. The North American genus Speyeria is one especially challenging radiation of butterflies due to p...

The effects of diet quality and temperature on the development time and size of stable flies, Stomoxys calcitrans (L.), was evaluated. Both development time and size varied relative to diet quality and temperature, and their effects were additive. Di...

Determining the influence of abiotic and biotic factors on pest dispersal behavior is a critical component of integrated pest management. The behavioral and physiological traits of movement of the Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama...

A major challenge to the area-wide management of Drosophila suzukii is understanding the fly’s host use and temporal dynamics, which may dictate local movement patterns. We determined D. suzukii’s seasonal host use in California’s San Joaquin Valley...

A long-term investigation of D. suzukii dynamics in wild blueberry fields from 2012–2018 demonstrates relative abundance is either still increasing or exhibiting periodicity seven years after the initial invasion. Relative abundance is determin...

Hermetic technologies are being promoted in Africa as safer and more effective methods of grain storage on smallholder farms. However, farmers and policy makers lack knowledge of their efficacy in controlling major stored grain pests. An on-station s...

Tart cherry production is challenged by precipitation events that may reduce crop protection against spotted-wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) (SWD). Due to SWD’s devastating impacts on yield, growers are often faced with the option of insec...

The New Zealand stick insect Clitarchus hookeri has both sexual and parthenogenetic (all-female) populations. Sexual populations exhibit a scramble competition mating system with distinctive sex roles, where females are signalers and males are search...

The Amblyomma genus of ticks comprises species that are aggressive human biters and vectors of pathogens. Numerous species in the genus are undergoing rapid range expansion. Amblyomma ticks have occasionally been introduced into California, but as ye...

Previous studies have suggested that exuviae can be used for the identification of cicada species, but the precise characteristics that differ among species have not been determined. Thus, we performed the first comparative analyses of the leg morpho...

Worldwide monitoring programs of the invasive fruit pest Drosophila suzukii Matsumura (Diptera: Drosophilidae), using fermentation baits like apple cider vinegar (ACV), revealed a counterintuitive period of low trap catches during summer, followed by...

Eggplant (Solanum melongena Linn.), or brinjal, was engineered to express an insecticidal protein (Cry1Ac) from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and commercialized in Bangladesh on a limited basis in 2014. As part of an insect resistance management strate...

Drosophila suzukii Matsumura is a damaging invasive pest of sweet cherry. Using a series of laboratory leaf contact assays, semi-field, and orchard spray programs we aimed to determine the impact of insecticide programs on D. suzukii adult mortality...

Recently in Poland, cases of host expansion have frequently been observed in the typically monophagous bird-cherry ermine moth (Yponomeuta evonymella), which has moved from its native host plant, bird cherry (Prunus padus), to a new, widely distribut...

The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda, threatens maize production in Africa. A survey was conducted to determine the distribution of FAW and its natural enemies and damage severity in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in 2017 and 2018. A total of...

In this special issue the focus is on the factors and (molecular) mechanisms that determine the transmission efficiency of a variety of insect pathogens in a number of insect hosts. In this editorial, we summarize the main findings of the twelve pape...

Solid set canopy delivery systems (SSCDS) are a novel foliar agrochemical delivery system designed as an alternative for airblast sprayers in high density fruit production. This study tested the pest management potential, coverage, and chemical depos...

Mexico has the third highest diversity of passalid beetles in the World. Here we describe Tonantzin new genus, a new monotypic genus, potentially endemic to the mountains of central Mexico. The new genus is diagnosed by a new configuration of charact...

The azalea lace bug, Stephanitis pyrioides (Scott) (Hemiptera: Tingidae), is an important insect pest of azaleas (Rhododendron L. spp.) in the USA. Stephanitis pyrioides feeds on azalea foliage and causes extensive chlorosis, which reduces the aesthe...

The lone star (Amblyomma americanum), black-legged (Ixodes scapularis) and American dog ticks (Dermacentor variabilis) are species of great public health importance as they are competent vectors of several notable pathogens. While the regional distri...

Sources of infestation are the key elements to be considered in the development of habitat management techniques for the control of maize stemborers. Several wild plants, grasses mostly, have been identified that serve as hosts for stemborers and the...

In environments undergoing constant transformation due to human action, such as deforestation and urbanization, the emergence of pests has become a challenge for agriculture and human welfare. In Brazil, over a thousand tonnes of pesticides are used...

Glutamine synthetase (GS) is a key enzyme in glutamine synthesis and is associated with multiple physiological processes in insects, such as embryonic development, heat shock response, and fecundity regulation. However, little is known about the infl...

Polistine wasps collect nectar for their energetic demand and for the provision of the brood. They are mainly ectothermic during different behavioral tasks. We investigated the body temperature of two species living in differing habitats and climate...

Necrophagous fly species are commonly used as forensic tools to estimate the minimum postmortem interval (PMI_min). Many researchers raised necrophagous flies under constant temperature regimes to collect their developmental data. However, in most for...

Fungus-growing termites have to defend both themselves and their monoculture fungal cultivars from antagonistic microbes. One of the ways that pathogens can enter the termite colony is on the plant substrate that is collected by termite foragers. In...