In a study conducted in Florida, we analyzed sugar composition and pollen concentration in the crop of adult Larra bicolor, a parasitoid of Scapteriscus mole crickets, using gas chromatography and hemocytometers. The results were compared with chromatograms obtained from nectar of Larra's principal host plant Spermacoce verticillata and mole cricket hemolymph. The objective was to increase the knowledge about feeding behavior of this wasp to include this information in IPM programs to control mole crickets.
Sugars from Larra crops and Spermacoce nectar have the same composition: sucrose (S), glucose (G), fructose (F) and turanose (T). Nectar and the wasp's crop contents are sucrose-dominant S:(G+F)>0.99. There are small differences in the sugar composition in the crop of males and females of L. bicolor, which are probably due to the host-feeding behavior that Larra females display.
Pollen concentration in the crop was no different from that of the crop of Apis mellifera, honey bee, and we did not find any evidence that Larra is using pollen as nutrient. Apparently, the wasp ingests pollen by accident while feeding on nectar
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