Control of S. exigua was greater with M. pallidipes plus SeNPV than with M. pallidipes alone. Microplitis pallidipes preferred healthy hosts to infected hosts. Parasitoids were able to complete their development in virus-infected hosts before the hosts died from the virus infection. The parasitoid ovipositors contaminated with the virus could carry and transmit SeNPV.

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Urban agriculture is making an increasing contribution to food security in large cities around the world. The potential contribution of biodiversity to ecological intensification in urban agricultural systems has not been investigated. We present monitoring data collected from rice fields in 34 community farms in mega-urban Shanghai, China, from 2001 to 2015, and show that the presence of a border crop of soybeans and neighboring crops (maize, eggplant and Chinese cabbage), both without weed control, increased invertebrate predator abundance, decreased the abundance of pests and dependence on insecticides, and increased grain yield and economic profits. Two 2 year randomized experiments with the low and high diversity practices in the same locations confirmed these results. Our study shows that diversifying farming practices can make an important contribution to ecological intensification and the sustainable use of associated ecosystem services in an urban ecosystem.

It has been reported that the susceptibility of insect herbivores to entomoviruses is affected by phytochemicals ingested during the acquisition of viral inoculum on the foliage of host plants. However, the relationship between this susceptibility and phytochemicals is poorly understood. To test this hypothesis of plant‐mediated effects on this susceptibility, we measured the effects of foliage from three plants, soybeans (Glycine max), collards (Brassica oleracea) and water convolvuluses (Ipomoea aquatica), on the susceptibility of larval beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua) to nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV), and analysed six foliar chemicals (total phenolics, peroxidase [POD], catalase [CAT], superoxide dismutase [SOD], endochitinase and exochitinase) in the three plants, respectively. The results of exponential modelling indicated that the LD50s (median lethal dose) of NPV to larvae increased with the increase in both phenolics and POD but declined with the increase in four other foliar chemicals, while the opposite trend was found between median lethal time (LT50) of NPV and the six foliar chemicals. This study reveals that phenolics and POD decrease host susceptibility to the entomoviruses and that CAT, SOD, endochitinase and exochitinase increase this susceptibility.

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