Many agriculture systems are disturbed by harvesting or management practices (e.g., insecticide application). These disturbances affect the ability of specialist and generalist natural enemies to control agricultural pests. Disturbances also influence the strength and character of intraguild interactions, such as intraguild predation and competition among natural enemies for the pest. I will use the diverse community of natural enemies attacking pea aphids in alfalfa to address how disturbances influence the success of different types of natural enemies in controlling pea aphid populations.
Species 1: Homoptera Aphididae Acyrthosiphon pisum
Species 2: Hymenoptera Braconidae Aphidius ervi
Keywords: intraguild interactions, predator-prey interactions
The ESA 2001 Annual Meeting - 2001: An Entomological Odyssey of ESA