Food preference of Amblyseiusswirskii(Acari: Phytoseiidae) ondifferent stages of Tetranychus urticae(Acari: Tetranychidae) and Bemisiatabaci(Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae)

Soleymani, Samaneh; Seiedy, Marjan; Hakimitabar, Masoud

doi:10.22073/pja.v5i1.14712

Food preference of Amblyseiusswirskii(Acari: Phytoseiidae) ondifferent stages of Tetranychus urticae(Acari: Tetranychidae) and Bemisiatabaci(Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae)

Authors

Samaneh Soleymani ¹

Marjan Seiedy ²

Masoud Hakimitabar ³

¹ Department of Plant Protection, College of Agriculture, Shahrood Universityof Technology, Shahrood, Iran;

² School of Biology and Center of Excellence in Phylogeny of living organisms, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran;

³ Department of Plant Protection, College of Agriculture, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran;

10.22073/pja.v5i1.14712

Abstract

The prey preference of polyphagous predators plays an important role in suppressing different species of herbivorous mites and insects. Prey stages preference of the predatory mite, Amblyseius swirskii Athias-Henriot was investigated among egg, protonymph and deutonymph of Tetranychus urticae Koch and egg, first and second instar nymphs of Bemisia tabaci Gennadius. All experiments were conducted using bean (cultivar: Almoti) leaf discs in Petri dishes (8 cm in diameter) under laboratory condition with 25±2 ^̊C, 70±5% RH and 16 L: 8 D photoperiod. The preference for female predator was calculated with Manly’s preference index (β). Comparison of the preference indices using a t-test showed that A. swirskii consumed significantly more eggs than protonymphs and deutonymphs of T. urticae. There was also a significant difference between consumed protonymphs and deutonymphs of T. urticae. A. swirskii consumed significantly more eggs than second instar nymphs of B. tabaci. There was a significant difference between first instar nymphs and second instar nymphs of B. tabaci and between eggs and first instar nymphs of B. tabaci. Our findings suggest that prey stages had effect on the prey selection of A. swirskii.

Keywords

Biological control

predator

prey stage

spider mite

whitefly