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Parasitism rates and parasitoid complexes of the wheat midges, Sitodiplosis mosellana, Contarinia tritici and Haplodiplosis marginata

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Abstract

Three species of cecidomyiid midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae), whose larvae overwinter in the soil, can cause significant yield losses on wheat in Europe: the orange wheat blossom midge, Sitodiplosis mosellana (Géhin), the yellow wheat blossom midge, Contarinia tritici (Kirby), and the saddle gall midge, Haplodiplosis marginata (von Roser). The biological control of wheat midges by their parasitoids can contribute to reduce the midge populations. Soil samples were collected in several fields in Belgium in 2012–2014 in order to characterize the parasitism rates and parasitoid complexes in overwintering larvae. The parasitism rates varied greatly between the sampled fields: 3–100, 0–100 and 2% for S. mosellana, H. marginata and C. tritici, respectively. The parasitism rate was not related to the larval density of wheat midge. The three wheat midges have totally distinct parasitoid complexes in Belgium. Eight species (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae and Platygastridae) were found as parasitoid of S. mosellana: Macroglenes penetrans (Kirby), Amblypasis tritici (Walker), Euxestonotus error (Fitch), Euxestonutus sp. Fouts, Leptacis sp. Foerster, Platygaster gracilipes (Huggert), Platygaster nisus Walker, and Platygaster tuberosula (Kieffer). According to their abundance, M. penetrans, E. error and P. tuberosula appeared as the main parasitoids of S. mosellana in Belgium. For the two other wheat midges, only one species of the family Platygastridae was found for each midge: Platygaster equestris (Spittler) for H. marginata and Synopeas myles (Walker) for C. tritici.

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Data availability

All raw datasets and the R code used to perform the graphs and statistical analyses are available in a public repository: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5794551.v1.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the staff at the Walloon Agricultural Research Centre (CRA-W), especially J. Denayer and A. Mahieu, for their technical assistance. We gratefully acknowledged the financial support from the Walloon Region (DGARNE).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Protection and Ecotoxicology Unit, Life Sciences Department, Walloon Agricultural Research Centre, Chemin de Liroux 2, 5030, Gembloux, Belgium

    Sandrine Chavalle, Gilles San Martin y Gomez & Michel De Proft

  2. Troldhøjvej 3, 3310, Ølsted, Denmark

    Peter Neerup Buhl

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  1. Sandrine Chavalle
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  2. Peter Neerup Buhl
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Correspondence to Sandrine Chavalle.

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Chavalle, S., Buhl, P.N., San Martin y Gomez, G. et al. Parasitism rates and parasitoid complexes of the wheat midges, Sitodiplosis mosellana, Contarinia tritici and Haplodiplosis marginata. BioControl 63, 641–653 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10526-018-9899-z

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