The green peach aphid (Myzus persicae), a plant pest, and gray mold disease, caused by Botrytis cinerea, affect vegetables and fruit crops all over the world. To control this aphid and mold, farmers typically rely on the use of chemical insecticides or fungicides. However, intensive use of these chemicals over many years has led to the development of resistance. To overcome this problem, there is a need to develop alternative control methods to suppress populations of this plant pest and pathogen. Recently, potential roles have been demonstrated for entomopathogenic fungi in endophytism, phytopathogen antagonism, plant growth promotion, and rhizosphere colonization. Here, the antifungal activities of selected fungi with high virulence against green peach aphids were tested to explore their potential for the dual control of B. cinerea and M. persicae. Antifungal activities against B. cinerea were evaluated by dual culture assays using both aerial conidia and cultural filtrates of entomopathogenic fungi. Two fungal isolates, Beauveria bassiana SD15 and Metarhizium anisopliae SD3, were identified as having both virulence against aphids and antifungal activity. The virulence of these isolates against aphids was further tested using cultural filtrates, blastospores, and aerial conidia. The most virulence was observed in the simultaneous treatment with blastospores and cultural filtrate. These results suggest that the two fungal isolates selected in this study could be used effectively for the dual control of green peach aphids and gray mold for crop protection.

The virulence against the two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Koch, was evaluated with entomopathogenic fungus Paecilomyces lilacinus (Thom) Samson HY-4 which is isolated from coleopteran insect and registered to Korean and US patents. Virulence tests were conducted with conidial suspensions (1.5 ×10 6 conidia/ml) of P. lilacinus HY-4 against T. urticae adults and positive results were recorded in laboratory conditions. The spraying device was also developed for the efficient and exact evaluation of treatment. The developed spraying device was named as SD-tower sprayer and its efficacy of spraying conidia was evaluated. The accumulated mortality caused by P. lilacinus HY-4 using SD-tower spray was about 73% at 6 days after inoculation. This suggest that the isolate P. lilacinus HY-4 may be considered as promising for a new approach to prevent adult infestations by T. urticae.

To investigate the degree of individuals' concept and awareness of insects, a survey study was conducted with students and adults living in Korea. The misconception rate for insects was about 50% for both students and adults, but it was lower for students and people who had experienced insect-related events than for adults and those who had not. The highest misconception rate was obtained in answer to a question about the basic structure of an insect. Most people had a high awareness of insects. Significant differences and correlations for the awareness of insects were found between students and adults, men and women, people who had experienced insect-related events and those who had not. The experience of an insect-related event most influenced awareness of insects. These results suggest that increasing people's interest in insects and utilizing insects in treatment situations may be beneficial for the field of mental healthcare. IntroductionInsects are among the most diverse groups of animals; the number of existing species is estimated to be between six and ten million (Chapman, 2006;Vojtech et al., 2002). These animals are found in nearly every environment. Humans regard certain insects as pests and attempt to control them using insecticides; however, most insects perform complex ecological roles and provide either direct or indirect economic benefits to humans (Cherniack, 2010;Ratcliffe et al., 2011). Insect pollinators are also essential to the life-cycles of many flowering plant species, upon which most organisms are at least partly dependent (Klein et al., 2007). Recently, the importance of insects as food sources or as pets has increased in many countries, including Korea. Various therapies have been developed to prevent this problem, including music therapy, art therapy, play therapy, drama therapy, horticultural therapy, and animal-assisted therapy, among others (Marcus, 2013;Söderback et al., 2004;Solanki et al., 2013).The rearing or observation of insects can provide some humans with good feelings or even affection; therefore, it is possible that insects may be used effectively as a therapeutic tool. In this study, we performed a survey analysis examining