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25 April 2020 Aphid Honeydew Enhances Parasitoid Longevity to the Same Extent as a High-Quality Floral Resource: Implications for Conservation Biological Control of the Wheat Stem Sawfly (Hymenoptera: Cephidae)
Tatyana A. Rand, Debra K. Waters
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Abstract

Providing sugar resources for parasitoids is an important component of habitat management approaches to bolster biological control. We screened three flowering cover crop species, and one aphid species, for their potential to increase the longevity of the parasitoid wasp, Bracon cephi (Gahan) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), an important biological control agent of the wheat stem sawfly, Cephus cinctus Norton (Hymenoptera: Cephidae). We found that buckwheat and honeydew from the cereal aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi (Linnaeus) (Hemiptera: Aphididae), increased longevity of B. cephi females by over threefold, while longevity on sunflower and coriander was not significantly different from controls on wheat.The results suggest that incorporating buckwheat into cover crop mixes could enhance parasitoid performance. However, the finding that honeydew associated with a common aphid in wheat provides a suitable resource suggests that a better understanding of the varying quality, and spatial and temporal availability, of aphid honeydew will be a critical consideration in evaluating the potential benefits of managing floral resources for parasitoid conservation in this system.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America 2020. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
Tatyana A. Rand and Debra K. Waters "Aphid Honeydew Enhances Parasitoid Longevity to the Same Extent as a High-Quality Floral Resource: Implications for Conservation Biological Control of the Wheat Stem Sawfly (Hymenoptera: Cephidae)," Journal of Economic Entomology 113(4), 2022-2025, (25 April 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toaa076
Received: 5 December 2019; Accepted: 25 March 2020; Published: 25 April 2020
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KEYWORDS
carbohydrate
conservation biological control
floral nectar
habitat management
resource supplementation
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