Floral presence and flower identity alter cereal aphid endosymbiont communities on adjacent crops.

ABSTRACT: Floral plantings adjacent to crops fields can recruit populations of natural enemies by providing flower nectar and non-crop prey to increase natural pest regulation. Observed variation in success rates might be due to changes in the unseen community of endosymbionts hosted by many herbivorous insects, of which some can confer resistance to natural enemies, for example, parasitoid wasps. Reduced insect control may occur if highly protective symbiont combinations increase in frequency via selection effects, and this is expected to be stronger in lower diversity systems.We used a large-scale field trial to analyse the bacterial endosymbiont communities hosted by cereal aphids Sitobion avenae collected along transects into strip plots of barley plants managed by either conventional or

SUBMITTER: Zytynska SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11005096 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature