In the primary forest, the vegetation is luxuriant and there are more types of insects, but it is rare to see a large number of pests of a certain kind, and even the damage is rampant. It is not difficult to find that in such an environment, although there are many kinds of insects, just like the clichéd police films, they are also divided into camps, fighting with each other and relying on each other and restricting each other, which also forms a relative balance. This leads to our protagonist today, the natural enemy insect (beneficial insect). In any case, in the field we still hope that there are more beneficial insects than pests, so it is still necessary to know the beneficial insects and avoid harming the beneficial insects when spraying.
About predator insects
Insect pests are major hidden dangers that harm the healthy growth of crops, and it can be said that it is difficult to read about eating plant organs, spreading viruses, and creating favorable conditions for the invasion of diseases.
However, among crop pests, the real harm is extremely great, causing economic losses throughout the year, and insects that need to be controlled regularly account for only 1% of the total number of insects. In contrast, each pest has several kinds, even dozens of species, hundreds of species of natural enemies in control of them, such as data show that there are more than 200 kinds of natural enemies of rice planthoppers and leafhoppers, which fully explains the abundance of natural enemy insect resources in nature.
The main species of predator insects
The species of natural enemy insects can be divided into predatory natural enemies and parasitic natural enemies according to their insecticide methods.
Predatory predators
There are many types of predatory predators, the most common of which are dragonflies, praying mantises, hunting bugs, stinging bugs, flower bugs, grasshoppers, ladybugs, walking insects, insectivorous flies, aphid flies, wasps, mud bees, spiders and predatory mites.
These natural enemies generally prey on a large amount of insects, and in the process of their growth and development, they must eat several, dozens or even thousands of insects before they can complete their growth and development. According to the feeding method, it can be divided into chewing type and sucking type, etc., and the following are briefly introduced:
Praying mantis: It can prey on more than 40 kinds of pests, such as flies, mosquitoes, locusts, moths and butterflies and their larvae, bare pupae, crickets and other small insects, cicadas, locusts, ants and other large insects.
Predatory ladybirds: Feed on plants such as aphids, mesquiterats, whiteflies, leaf mites, etc.
Predatory mites: Its range includes red mites, large red mites, velvet mites, long-bearded mites and plant mites, etc., which are omnivorous mites with red spiders, rust ticks and other plant leaf mites as the main food.
Grasshopper: Can prey on a variety of pests. Such as whitefly, red spiders, all kinds of aphids, in addition to the species also like to eat a lot of pest eggs, such as cotton bollworm, ground tiger, silver nocturnal moth, wheat moth and small bridge worms and other eggs, are within its food range, the picture shows grass aphids preying on aphids.
Bugs: Insects of the family Flower Bugs, The Family Of Blind Bugs, and The Family of The Cockroaches can prey on pests such as leafhoppers, planthoppers, aphids, thrips, cotton leaf mites and cotton worm eggs.
Aphid-eating flies: larvae prey on aphids and are effective natural enemies of aphids, mesozoans, whiteflies, leafhoppers, thrips, lepidoptera larvae, etc.
Parasitic predators
Parasitic natural predators are parasitic in the body of pests, feeding on the body fluids or internal organs of pests, causing the pests to die, most importantly parasitic bees and parasitic flies.
Red-eyed bees: Egg parasitic wasps that can parasitize a variety of lepidopteran pests such as corn borers, armyworms, striped borers, cotton bollworms, twill noctus moths and ground tigers. The picture shows the red-eyed wasp parasitizing sugarcane borer eggs.
Cocoon bees: parasitize a variety of moth and butterfly larvae, which play a certain role in controlling their occurrence.
Parasitic flies: Most of the larvae of Lepidoptera and leaf bee insects can be parasitized by parasitic flies, larvae of celestial cattle and wood beetle moths living in the stems of plants, scarab beetle larvae living in the soil, and parasitic flies can also parasitize adult insects such as beetles and bugs.
Exploitation of predatory insects
1. Awareness
The use of natural enemies insects for biological control must select excellent natural enemies, that is to say, to select a dominant species that play a larger role in an area or community.
The conditions that a good natural enemy must have are: high fertility; strong ability to find a host; match or closely match the life history, generation number and number of hosts of the host; strong diffusion ability; strong adaptability to the environment; strong selectivity of the host; easy to multiply.
2. Protection
After the pest lives in an area for a long time, it is inevitable that a certain species and number of natural enemies will accompany it. However, due to the limitations of various living conditions, the number of natural enemies is often insufficient to control pests. At this time, appropriate measures can be taken, such as protecting natural enemies from wintering safely, rationally using chemical pesticides, avoiding harm to natural enemies, and promoting the reproduction of natural enemies to control the occurrence and harm of pests.
3. Release
Natural enemy insects and their host or preying on them in nature often follow, not only with a lag in time, but also in numbers much lower than pests. Consider artificial rearing or direct purchase of the corresponding products to release pest control pests into the field at the first occurrence of pests.
The article comes from agricultural technology and is only for the reference of farmers