Cereal aphids, their parasites and predators caught in cages over oat and winter wheat crops

Abstract

SUMMARYThe trapping of alate aphids in emergence cages each 1 yd2 (0–83 m2) over cereal crops from mid‐June to the end of July, 1964 to 1971, always revealed colonies of cereal aphids within the crop.Four species, Sitobion avenae, S. fragariae, Metopolophium dirhodum and Rhopalosiphum padi occurred every year in different proportions. Alate aphids from winter wheat were most numerous in 1968 and fewest in 1967. Alatae developed slightly earlier in cages than in the field and peak catches were a few days earlier than in a nearby 12‐2 m suction trap.Cereal aphid colonies were adversely affected by bad weather in May, e.g. in 1969, and by predators. Coccinellidae (chiefly Propylea 14‐punctata) were the dominant predators in 1971 and 1968, Syrphidae in 1966, 1971 and 1968 and Chrysopidae in 1970. Parasites belonging mainly to the genus Aphidius were numerous every year. When hyperparasites such as Asaphes vulgaris, Lygocerus sp., Conostigmus sp. and Phaenoglyphis sp. were abundant as in 1967, they affected numbers of aphids in the current year and increased them in the following year (1968), possibly by hindering early, heavy parasitism. Hyperparasites could have an important influence in fluctuations of cereal aphid populations from year to year. Aphids of one species or another are always present in cereal crops in sufficient numbers during the summer months to provide copious quantities of honey dew, and this is unlikely to be a limiting factor in the biology of the wheat bulb fly, Leptohylemyia coarctata.