Insects, Volume 11, Issue 4

Host utilization information is critical to managers for estimating the hosts at risk and potential geographic range for gypsy moths from different geographic origins. In this study, the development and survival of gypsy moths from all three subspeci...

Bacillus thuringiensis is a spore-forming bacterium which infects insect larvae naturally via the oral route. Its virulence factors interact with the epithelium of the digestive tract of insect larvae, disrupting its function and eventually leading t...

The emerald ash borer, EAB (Agrilus planipennis) is a devastating alien pest of ash trees. It is spreading in European Russia and Ukraine and will appear in other European countries. Our aim was to determine the regions of Europe where the winter tem...

The jump performance of locusts depends on several physiological and environmental factors. Few studies have examined the effects of different ground types on the jump performance of locusts. Here, mature adult locusts (Locusta migratoria manilensis)...

Butterfly–host plant relationships can inform our understanding of ecological and trophic interactions that contribute to ecosystem function, resiliency, and services. The ecology of danaid–milkweed (Apocynaceae) host plant interactions has been stud...

Mass rearing of insects, used both as biological control agents and for food and feed, is receiving increasing attention. Efforts are being made to improve diets that are currently in use, and to identify alternative diets, as is the case with the pr...

The difficulty to locate mates and overcome predation can hamper species establishment and population maintenance. The effects of sparseness between individuals or the effect of predators on the probability of population growth can be difficult to me...

In the subtropics, agricultural activities such as beekeeping are greatly influenced by environmental challenges. In the desert of Central Arabia, honeybees forage on limited prairies that are affected by adverse weather conditions. Bee colonies redu...

Neonicotinoid and fungicide exposure has been linked to immunosuppression and increased susceptibility to disease in honeybees (Apis mellifera). European foulbrood, caused by the bacterium Melissococcus plutonius, is a disease of honeybee larvae whic...

Chitin is one the main components of the insect cuticle, and chitin synthase (CHS) is an important enzyme required for chitin formation. CHS has been characterized in various insect species, but the structure and biochemical properties in Spodoptera ...

Carabid communities are influenced by landscape features. Chinese steppes are subject to increasing desertification processes that are changing land-cover characteristics with negative impacts on insect communities. Despite those warnings, how land-c...

The policy regarding mosquito control strategies in Taiwan is based on integrated vector management (IVM). The major approach is source reduction via collaboration by both residents and governments. However, small and cryptic habitats of dengue vecto...

The pollen stores of bumble bees host diverse microbiota that influence overall colony fitness. Yet, the taxonomic identity of these symbiotic microbes is relatively unknown. In this descriptive study, we characterized the microbial community of poll...

Autophagy is a highly conserved and regulated process in eukaryotic cells and remodels cytoplasm, recovers essential nutrients, and disposes of unwanted cytoplasmic components. Autophagy-related gene (ATG) 8, identified in Heortia vitessoides Moore,...

Dietary macro-nutrients (i.e., carbohydrates, protein, and fat) are important for bee larval development and, thus, colony health and fitness. To which extent different diets (varying in macro-nutrient composition) affect adult bees and whether they...

In the current study, to combat insecticide resistance, we explored larvicidal, ovicidal, synergistic, and repellent activities of Sophora alopecuroides extract and its dominant constituents against Aedes albopictus. The results of the toxicity bioas...

Aerial web-spinning spiders (including large orb-weavers), as a group, depend almost entirely on flying insects as a food source. The recent widespread loss of flying insects across large parts of western Europe, in terms of both diversity and biomas...

Cannibalism in insects plays an important role in ecological relationships. Nonetheless, it has not been studied as extensively as in other arthropods groups (e.g., Arachnida). From a theoretical point of view, cannibalism has an impact on the develo...

There is an increasing need to monitor activity and population growth of arthropods; however, this is a time-consuming and financially demanding process. Using sensors to detect arthropods in the field can help to follow their dynamics in time. Impro...

Concanavalin A (ConA), a legume lectin, has been drawing increasing attention in recent years concerning its toxicity against insects and its potential application in pest management. In an attempt to evaluate the effect of ConA on potato psyllid (Ba...

The red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum is a known pest of various grains and stored-products such as wheat flours; however, T. castaneum feeds on and infests soybean and soy products. For more than 60 years, soy flour has been suggested to be unsta...

Agricultural intensification practices involve varying degrees of disturbance to the soil ecosystem. This study evaluated six agricultural management regimes with increasing levels of topsoil disturbance, on the composition and abundance of surface-a...

In the past centuries, viruses have benefited from globalization to spread across the globe, infecting new host species and populations. A growing number of viruses have been documented in the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Several of these contr...

A cadaver is colonized by a wide diversity of necrophagous insects. It is well documented that Dipterans are attracted by the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by a corpse during the first minutes following death. Coleopterans are known to b...

The invasive fall armyworm (FAW) is threatening maize production and the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in the newly invaded areas in Africa and Asia. To control this new key pest and to overcome health, environmental, and resistance...

The lychee erinose mite (LEM), Aceria litchii (Keifer) is a serious pest of lychee (Litchi chinensis Sonn.). LEM causes a type of gall called ‘erineum’ (abnormal felty growth of trichomes from the epidermis), where it feeds, reproduces an...

Achieving a better understanding of the consequences of nutrition to animal fitness and human health is a major challenge of our century. Nutritional ecology studies increasingly use nutritional landscapes to map the complex interacting effects of nu...

Reports of severe infestations caused by southern red mites (SRM), Oligonychus ilicis McGregor (Acari: Tetranychidae), have increased in recent years in southern highbush blueberries (SHB). Currently, there is little known about the management of tet...

The effects of microorganisms on plant-insect interactions have usually been underestimated. While plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are known to induce plant defenses, endosymbiotic bacteria hosted by herbivorous insects are often benefici...

African citrus psyllid (Trioza erytreae (Del Guercio)) is a vector insect of the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter africanus, the putative causal agent of Huanglongbing, the most devastating citrus disease in the world. The insect was found on the is...

To determine population genomic structure through high-throughput sequencing techniques has revolutionized research on non-model organisms. The coconut leaf beetle, Brontispa longissima (Gestro), is a widely distributed pest in Southern China. Here,...

To understand mitogenome characteristics and reveal phylogenetic relationships of the genus Ostrinia, including several notorious pests of great importance for crops, we sequenced the complete mitogenomes of four species: Ostrinia furnacalis (Guen&ea...

Fopius arisanus is a solitary endoparasitoid that parasitizes a variety of tephritid species. Native to the Indo-Australian region, it is currently exploited worldwide as a biological control agent due to its exceptional efficiency in reducing pest p...

The fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is a pest of tropical origin which recently invaded Africa, the Far East and Australia. Temperature, therefore, plays an important role in its invasion biology, since this pest does not go into diapause. The...

This study was carried out at Ny-Ålesund on Spitsbergen in Svalbard (High Arctic). Eight study sites were established along a transect from the fjord to the snout of the glacier. The sites differed from each other by the type of vegetation cove...

Lipases play essential roles in digestion, transport, and processing of dietary lipids in insects. For parasitoid wasps with a unique life cycle, lipase functions could be multitudinous in particular. Pteromalus puparum is a pupal endoparasitoid of b...

The attack patterns, infestation success and larval development of woodborers within living trees are complex and are largely shaped by host tree characteristics. Following a severe drought in a native eucalypt forest where outbreak densities of a na...

Crude extracts and essential oils of A. conyzoides were tested with larva and adult stages of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes to determine their insecticidal properties. The crude extracts and essential oils came from three varieties of A. conyzoides (with wh...

Libraries are invaluable resources, documenting significant events that have shaped human history. However, the preservation of old books is severely threatened by insects commonly referred to as bookworms. In this study, a sample of infested books i...

A study of the biological features and the potential population growth between two laboratory strains of the confused flour beetle, Tribolium confusum Jacquelin du Val (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) from Greece and Serbia is conducted on cracked barley...

Envenoming syndrome is a systemic reaction induced by inoculation of large volumes of Hymenoptera venom. The clinical manifestations range from skin allergic reactions to multiple organ failure. Vespid venom-induced toxic reactions and anaphylaxis ar...

Flight loss has occurred in many winged insect taxa. The flightless silkmoth Bombyx mori, is domesticated from the wild silkmoth, Bombyx mandarina, which can fly. In this paper, we studied morphological characteristics attributed to flightlessness in...

Nuclear factor erythroid 2 related factor 2 (Nrf2) belongs to the cap ‘n’ collar basic region leucine zipper (CNC-bZIP) transcription factor family, and is activated by diverse oxidants, pro-oxidants, antioxidants, and chemo-preventive ag...

We describe the identification, synthesis, and field-testing of aggregation-sex pheromones, or likely pheromone candidates, of seven species of South American cerambycid beetles in the subfamily Cerambycinae, of the tribes Eburiini and Neoibidionini....

Spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), is an introduced highly invasive insect pest in the US that poses a significant risk to forestry and agriculture. Assessing and predicting plant usage of the lanternfly has been challeng...

Azaleas (Rhododendron L. spp.) are widely grown ornamental plants in eastern and western regions of the USA. The azalea lace bug, Stephanitis pyrioides (Scott) (Hemiptera: Tingidae), is an important insect pest of azaleas. Adults and nymphs of S. pyr...

Eriosomatinae is a particular aphid group with typically heteroecious holocyclic life cycle, exhibiting strong primary host plant specialization and inducing galls on primary host plants. Aphids are frequently associated with bacterial symbionts, whi...

Dispersal represents a key life-history trait with several implications for the fitness of organisms, population dynamics and resilience, local adaptation, meta-population dynamics, range shifting, and biological invasions. Plastic and evolutionary c...

Tea (Camellia sinensis) is an important food product with thousands of years of human use. Being a non-washable food, no pesticide residues are allowed, which increases the importance of natural means of plant protection. Predation, a component of na...

Studies on abundance and distribution at different scales are rare. We examined whether the abundance of flower flies at a site in South Korea was related to the national occupancy and global distribution (distributional extent or range size) and whe...