Abstract
Halyomorpha halys is an invasive, polyphagous insect that feeds on many major crops, including apple. Statewide monitoring in Minnesota has shown continued increase of H. halys populations and occurrence of this pest in apple orchards. Potential arthropod natural enemies of H. halys and other pests have not been studied in Minnesota apple orchards. The purpose of this study was to characterize the composition of natural enemy communities; compare their abundances, richness and diversities between apple cultivars using different sampling methods; and assess the impact of natural enemies on sentinel eggs of H. halys in Minnesota apple orchards. Sampling occurred during the summers of 2017 and 2018 on Zestar! and Honeycrisp cultivars in four different apple orchards. In vacuum samples, arachnids, neuropterans, and coccinellids had the highest relative abundances. On yellow sticky traps, anthocorids were the most abundant. The total predator abundance differed between the cultivars sampled across years, with more predators found on Zestar! compared with Honeycrisp. No differences were observed in richness or diversity between cultivars with the exception of yellow sticky traps in 2017, which showed a greater diversity of predators in Zestar!. Despite the abundance of natural enemies sampled, sentinel egg masses deployed in the orchards each summer suffered on average <2% predation and no parasitism across years. Knowledge of differences in predator abundance between cultivars could inform management decisions; however, with current management practices, the potential for biological control of H. halys in conventional apple orchards appears low.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 324-333 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Environmental entomology |
Volume | 49 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 14 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by funds from the University of Minnesota Rapid Agriculture Response Fund (RARF). We thank Pheylan Anderson, Claire Lotzer, and Mads Bartz for assistance in data collection; Obiratanea da Silva Queiroz and Arthur Vieira for their advice on experimental design; Erica Nystrom and Daniela Pezzini for their expertise regarding brown marmorated stink bug sentinel egg mass surveys and egg dissection; select Minnesota apple growers for their cooperation and generous use of their orchards for this research; and Dr. William Hutchison, Dr. Mary Rogers and two anonymous reviewers for reviewing an earlier version of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Arthropod abundance
- Arthropod diversity
- Arthropod predator
- Halyomorpha halys
- Parasitoid
- Heteroptera
- Predatory Behavior
- Animals
- Minnesota
- Ovum
- Malus
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
- Journal Article