Abstract
With a view to improving the establishment of Aphidius gifuensis Ashmead, a potential natural enemy for suppression of aphids on vegetables, the effects of host deprivation and honey feeding before release on the parasitoid’s egg load and reproduction were studied under laboratory conditions. Host deprivation significantly affected mummy production and survival rate of female parasitoids. A. gifuensis produced more mummies when exposed to a short period (1 and 2 days) of host deprivation, but when host deprivation lasted for 3 days, their mummy production sharply decreased. Offspring produced by parasitoids that had been deprived of hosts for 2 days were much heavier than those produced by parasitoids deprived of hosts for 1 and 3 days. However, host deprivation did not affect emergence rate or offspring sex ratio; the emergence rate was always above 80%, and the offspring sex ratio was always female biased irrespective of whether the host-deprivation period was 1, 2, or 3 days. Honey feeding greatly increased egg load, longevity and decelerated oosorption of A. gifuensis when hosts were absent, and significantly increased parasitoid mummy production in late age. We discuss the results in the context of augmentative biological control, with the view to understanding how to increase parasitoid performance after they are released.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the assistance of all the staff and students at the Key Laboratory of Applied Entomology, Northwest A & F University at Yangling, Shaanxi, China. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China (973 programs, 2012CB114105), the Natural Science Foundation of China (31272089), the Special Fund for Agro-Scientific Research in the Public Interest (201103022), and the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-25-B-06).
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Pan, MZ., Wang, L., Zhang, CY. et al. The influence of feeding and host deprivation on egg load and reproduction of an aphid parasitoid, Aphidius gifuensis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Appl Entomol Zool 52, 255–263 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-016-0474-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13355-016-0474-8