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Abstract :
[en] The environmental and health risks associated with pesticide-centered pest management urged scientists towards exploring the efficiency of nature-based solutions to protect crop yields. Besides their direct impact as entomopathogens, hypocrealean entomopathogenic fungi (HEF) within Metarhizium play an important role in increasing plant resistance to biotic stressors. Aphids are one of the most important groups of insect pests in agriculture. Although aphid infestation levels can be lowered by either predatory hoverflies or HEF treatments, the interplay between these two natural enemies is, however, largely unknown. Thus, exploiting ecological interactions among aphids, HEF, and predator fauna is important to support aphid control practices. Here, we evaluated whether treatments of tomato plants with the HEF Metarhizium brunneum USDA4556 affected the (1) fitness of the potato aphid Macrosiphum euphorbiae, (2) plant volatile organic compound (VOC) profile, and (3) host-choice behavior of aphidophagous hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus. In a two-choice experiment where female hoverflies were given the option to select between control plants and fungus-treated plants, E. balteatus preferred treated plants over the controls. Analysis from VOC composition of treated and non-treated plants, besides host choice-behavior of hoverflies, would provide a new perspective for designing a more suitable biocontrol strategy without harming beneficial insects.
