Host-range study about four aphid parasitoid species among 16 aphid species for constructing banker–plant systems

Abstract

To provide fundamental information for the biological control of aphids in vegetable greenhouses, we compared the host ranges of four aphid parasitoid species, Aphidius colemani Viereck, Aphidius gifuensis Ashmead, Diaeretiella rapae (M’Intosh), and Ephedrus nacheri Quilis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae). The acceptability as host of 11 vegetable-pest aphids, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris), Aphis craccivora Koch, Aphis gossypii Glover, Aulacorthum solani (Kaltenbach), Brevicoryne brassicae (Linnaeus), Chaetosiphon fragaefolii (Cockerell), Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), Macrosiphoniella sanborni (Gillette), Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Thomas), Myzus persicae (Sulzer), and Uroleucon formosanum (Takahashi), in addition to five aphid species, Melanaphis sacchari (Zehntner), Rhopalosiphum maidis (Fitch), Rhopalosiphum padi (Linnaeus), Schizaphis graminum (Rondani), and Sitobion akebiae (Shinji) (Hemiptera: Aphididae) that serve as alternative hosts in banker–plant systems for the four aphid parasitoid species, were investigated. A newly emerged pair of parasitoid adults were provided to 100 aphids of each species on caged host plants in a 25 °C chamber for 24 h. The numbers of mummified aphids and emerged adults were counted in 10 trials for each aphid species. Aphidius colemani, A. gifuensis, D. rapae and E. nacheri parasitized four, two, three, and eight pest species, respectively, and four, three, three, and five alternative host species, respectively. Ephedrus nacheri had the broadest host range among the four species, and all the four species parasitized M. persicae, R. maidis, and S. graminum. This information will be useful for selecting candidate of biological control agents for aphids and for constructing banker–plant systems.