Slow establishment and risks of plant damage are major constraints for the use of the predatory mirid bugs that are commercially available for release in greenhouse crops. Therefore, a new interest has turned towards two predatory Dicyphus species (Heteroptera: Miridae) that have been investigated in the past but have not been used commercially in augmentative biological control. We assessed their development duration and survival at temperature and day length of summer and winter conditions and assessed the feasibility of pre-planting predator establishment on plant seedlings under those conditions. Dicyphus bolivari (Lindberg) and D. errans (Wolff) nymphs reached the adult stage in 47.4 (winter conditions) and 18.6 days (summer conditions) and 46.0 (winter) and 16.3 days (summer) respectively. They showed more than 90% survival when provided with food (Ephestia eggs). Provision of food allowed females to lay more eggs and to distribute them more evenly among tomato seedlings. No injuries or other negative effects on tomato seedling development were observed. Nymph development time of the two mirid species studied were slightly higher than other commercial mirid predators. The results show great potential of these predatory bugs, which are now being tested under field conditions.
Introduction Augmentative biological control with parasitoids and predators has been practiced for decades to control the main pests in greenhouse crops (Van Lenteren and Woets, 1988). Biological control programmes initially applied in the Mediterranean Basin in the 1980s and 1990s were based on the northern European experience, and underwent a rapid expansion in the early 21st century, especially the release of generalist predators (Albajes and Alomar, 1999). Several species of Miridae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) have received special attention for their capacity to control the key pests in various vegetable crops (Castañé et al., 2004; Perdikis et al., 2008; Ingegno et al., 2013). These mirids are polyphagous and are also characterized by their facultative omnivory (Alomar and Albajes, 1996; Ingegno et al., 2011), that is, their capacity to feed on both prey and plant resources (Coll and Guershon, 2002; Albajes and Alomar, 2008). The ability of mirids to feed facultatively on plants may allow them to survive on the crop when prey is scarce or absent, establish themselves early in the season, and prevent pests from reaching damaging densities (Albajes and Alomar, 2008), although their use may also lead to some crop plant damage, (Castañé et al., 2011; Calvo et al., 2012b). In the Mediterranean region, predatory bugs such as Dicyphus bolivari Wagner, (recently D. maroccanus has been synonymized with D. bolivari, Sánchez and Cassis, 2018), Dicyphus errans (Wolff), Dicyphus cerastii Wagner, Macrolophus costalis Fieber, Macrolophus pygmaeus (Rambur) and Nesidiocoris tenuis (Reuter) can be found on vegetable and ornamental crops but also on many non-crop plants (
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