Abstract
Agromyzidae (Insecta: Diptera) is a cosmopolitan family of acalyptrate flies, with almost 3,000 species worldwide distributed. Most species are leaf miners on a large number of plants. Among them, Liriomyza Mik, 1894 is a large genus of leaf-miner species that can cause significant damage to economically important crops and is considered agricultural pests, such as Liriomyza sativae Blanchard, 1938 and Liriomyza huidobrensis (Blanchard, 1926), which are herein investigated. The present study deals with the impact of climatic factors (temperature, humidity, and precipitation), seasonality, and parasitoid abundance on leaf-miner infestation during one year in five cultivated crops in Northeastern Brazil. Climatic factors for instance had different effects on L. sativae populations in melon and watermelon crops. Larval abundances were greater during the dry season for both species, L. sativae and L. huidobrensis, and abundance of adult parasitoids followed the increase of mining larvae.
Highlights
Agromyzidae (Diptera) is a large family of phytophagous acalyptrate flies, with almost 3,000 known species around the world (ITIS, 2016), more than 75% of them have larvae feeding on plant leafs
Liriomyza huidobrensis occurs in a large number of hosts and its damage is mainly caused by larval activity and by the feeding punctures made
While higher precipitations caused a positive relation with the number of leaves and larvae, which continued to increase even in rainy seasons; it caused a decrease in the number of parasitoids
Summary
Agromyzidae (Diptera) is a large family of phytophagous acalyptrate flies, with almost 3,000 known species around the world (ITIS, 2016), more than 75% of them have larvae feeding on plant leafs. Some species are polyphagous, attacking a wide variety of species from different botanical families, and are considered as important agricultural pests (Boucher, 2010). Liriomyza Mik, 1894 is a large genus with 456 leaf-miner species (ITIS, 2016), four of them considered truly polyphagous: Liriomyza sativae Blanchard, 1938, Liriomyza langei Frick, 1951, Liriomyza huidobrensis (Blanchard, 1926), and Liriomyza trifolii (Burgess, 1880) attacking a wide range of plant species, and Liriomyza brassicae (Riley, 1885), more restricted to the Brassicaceae family (Lonsdale, 2011). The wide variety of insecticides used to control Liriomyza pest species does not affect resistant populations. It is still unknown whether parasitoids are effectively able to control fly populations due to high levels of insecticides in some regions (Murphy & Lasalle, 1999). Liriomyza huidobrensis occurs in a large number of hosts and its damage is mainly caused by larval activity and by the feeding punctures made
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