The Biology, Ecology, and Management of Plant Pests

A special issue of Biology (ISSN 2079-7737). This special issue belongs to the section "Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 March 2026 | Viewed by 236

Special Issue Editors

Tea Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, China
Interests: insect physiology; pest physical control technology; integrated pest management
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Co-Guest Editor
School of Mathematics, Jilin University, Changchun 130118, China
Interests: applied mathematics; biomathematics

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Co-Guest Editor
College of Plant Protection, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun 130118, China
Interests: insect ecology; insect toxicology; integrated pest management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Plant pests have significant impacts on agricultural productivity and ecosystem stability. Understanding the biology and ecology of these pests is essential to develop effective and sustainable pest management strategies. This involves gaining novel insights into the physiological mechanisms that underpin pest survival and proliferation, conducting detailed studies on behavioral patterns and their triggers, unraveling the genetic basis of pest adaptation and resistance, and exploring the evolutionary trajectories that shape pest species over time. This Special Issue seeks to highlight research on the complex ecological relationships between pests and their surroundings. This type of research includes investigating the pivotal role of natural enemies in regulating pest populations, studying the mechanisms and potential of host plant resistance as a defensive strategy, and analyzing how various environmental factors, such as climate change, habitat modification, and resource availability, interact to influence pest population dynamics and community structures. We encourage submissions that showcase innovative biological control methods and integrated pest management (IPM) programs, such as biomathematical modeling, remote sensing and multispectral technologies, and the introduction of natural predators or pathogens; advances in ecological engineering approaches that modify the environment to suppress pest populations; and other novel management tactics that offer environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional chemical control.

Dr. Lei Bian
Dr. Yu Gao
Dr. Suli Liu
Dr. Yuxin Zhou
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • climate change
  • genetic diversity
  • life table
  • population dynamic
  • biomathematics
  • insect behavior
  • insect physiology
  • pest resistance
  • molecular mechanism
  • olfactory peripheral neurons
  • insecticide resistance
  • plant–pest–natural enemy
  • plant–insect-vector–pathogen
  • integrated pest management
  • pest monitoring and early warning

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 1541 KiB  
Article
A Ubiquitous Volatile in Noctuid Larval Frass Attracts a Parasitoid Species
by Chaowei Wang, Xingzhou Liu, Sylvestre T. O. Kelehoun, Kai Dong, Yueying Wang, Maozhu Yin, Jinbu Li, Yu Gao and Hao Xu
Biology 2025, 14(8), 1007; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology14081007 - 6 Aug 2025
Abstract
Natural enemies commonly probe larval bodies and frass with their antennae for prey hunting. However, the attractants to natural enemies emitted directly from hosts and host-associated tissues remained largely unknown. Here, we used two generalist noctuid species, Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) and Spodoptera frugiperda [...] Read more.
Natural enemies commonly probe larval bodies and frass with their antennae for prey hunting. However, the attractants to natural enemies emitted directly from hosts and host-associated tissues remained largely unknown. Here, we used two generalist noctuid species, Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner) and Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith), along with the larval endoparasitoid Microplitis mediator (Haliday) to address the question. Extracts of larval frass of both the noctuid species were strongly attractive to M. mediator females when hosts were fed either maize, cotton, soybean leaves, or an artificial diet without leaf tissues. By using a combination of electrophysiological measurements and behavioral tests, we found that the attractiveness of frass mainly relied on a volatile compound ethyl palmitate. The compound was likely to be a by-product of host digestion involving gut bacteria because an antibiotic supplement in diets reduced the production of the compound in frass and led to the decreased attractiveness of frass to the parasitoids. In contrast, extracts of the larval bodies of both the noctuid species appeared to be less attractive to the parasitoids than their respective fecal extracts, independently of types of food supplied to the larvae. Altogether, larval frass of the two noctuid species was likely to be more important than their bodies in attracting the endoparasitoid species, and the main attractant of frass was probably one of the common metabolites of digestion involving gut microbes, and its emission is likely to be independent of host plant species. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Biology, Ecology, and Management of Plant Pests)
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