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Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature

BACKGROUND: Climate warming is a challenge for many plants and animals as they have to respond to rising temperature. Rising temperature was observed to affect herbivores and predators. Activity-density of abundant predatory carabid beetles, which are considered important natural control agents of a...

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Autores principales: Frank, Thomas, Bramböck, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4833911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27084775
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-016-0076-x
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author Frank, Thomas
Bramböck, Martin
author_facet Frank, Thomas
Bramböck, Martin
author_sort Frank, Thomas
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Climate warming is a challenge for many plants and animals as they have to respond to rising temperature. Rising temperature was observed to affect herbivores and predators. Activity-density of abundant predatory carabid beetles, which are considered important natural control agents of agricultural pests, was observed to increase at rising temperature. The pollen beetle Meligethesaeneus is one of the most important insect pests in European oilseed rape fields, and its larvae were observed to be important prey to carabid beetles. Therefore, we performed a laboratory experiment to detect whether rising temperature affects the number of pollen beetle larvae killed by five abundant carabids, and larval biomass ingested by carabids. In three climate chambers actual temperature (T1) was compared to temperatures increased by 3 °C (T2) and 5 °C (T3). This is the first study investigating the feeding of carabid predators on an arable pest insect spanning a realistic forecasted climate warming scenario of 3 and 5 °C, thus providing basic knowledge on that neglected research area. We hypothesized that carabids kill more pollen beetle larvae at rising temperature, and biomass intake by carabids increases with rising temperature. RESULTS: Both beetle species and temperature had significant effects on the number of killed Meligethes larvae and larval biomass ingested by carabids. Amara ovata, Harpalus distinguendus and Poecilus cupreus killed significantly more pollen beetle larvae at T2 and T3 compared to T1. Anchomenus dorsalis killed significantly more larvae at T2 than T1, and Harpalus affinis showed no significant differences among temperatures. Biomass intake by A. ovata, H. distinguendus and A. dorsalis was significantly larger at T2 and T3 compared to T1. Biomass intake by H. affinis and P. cupreus did not significantly differ among temperatures. Among the five carabids tested P. cupreus exhibited the highest values for both number of killed larvae and biomass intake. CONCLUSIONS: Our lab results suggest a clear potential for higher feeding of pollen beetle larvae by carabid beetles at rising temperature. As rising temperature leads to increased activity of abundant arable carabids in the field, it may be expected that there is enhanced pest suppression under warmer field conditions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-016-0076-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-48339112016-04-17 Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature Frank, Thomas Bramböck, Martin BMC Ecol Research Article BACKGROUND: Climate warming is a challenge for many plants and animals as they have to respond to rising temperature. Rising temperature was observed to affect herbivores and predators. Activity-density of abundant predatory carabid beetles, which are considered important natural control agents of agricultural pests, was observed to increase at rising temperature. The pollen beetle Meligethesaeneus is one of the most important insect pests in European oilseed rape fields, and its larvae were observed to be important prey to carabid beetles. Therefore, we performed a laboratory experiment to detect whether rising temperature affects the number of pollen beetle larvae killed by five abundant carabids, and larval biomass ingested by carabids. In three climate chambers actual temperature (T1) was compared to temperatures increased by 3 °C (T2) and 5 °C (T3). This is the first study investigating the feeding of carabid predators on an arable pest insect spanning a realistic forecasted climate warming scenario of 3 and 5 °C, thus providing basic knowledge on that neglected research area. We hypothesized that carabids kill more pollen beetle larvae at rising temperature, and biomass intake by carabids increases with rising temperature. RESULTS: Both beetle species and temperature had significant effects on the number of killed Meligethes larvae and larval biomass ingested by carabids. Amara ovata, Harpalus distinguendus and Poecilus cupreus killed significantly more pollen beetle larvae at T2 and T3 compared to T1. Anchomenus dorsalis killed significantly more larvae at T2 than T1, and Harpalus affinis showed no significant differences among temperatures. Biomass intake by A. ovata, H. distinguendus and A. dorsalis was significantly larger at T2 and T3 compared to T1. Biomass intake by H. affinis and P. cupreus did not significantly differ among temperatures. Among the five carabids tested P. cupreus exhibited the highest values for both number of killed larvae and biomass intake. CONCLUSIONS: Our lab results suggest a clear potential for higher feeding of pollen beetle larvae by carabid beetles at rising temperature. As rising temperature leads to increased activity of abundant arable carabids in the field, it may be expected that there is enhanced pest suppression under warmer field conditions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-016-0076-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-04-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4833911/ /pubmed/27084775 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-016-0076-x Text en © Frank and Bramböck. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Frank, Thomas
Bramböck, Martin
Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title_full Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title_fullStr Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title_full_unstemmed Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title_short Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
title_sort predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4833911/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27084775
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-016-0076-x
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