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Birds as potential suppressing agents of eucalypt plantations’ insect pests

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Abstract

Eucalyptus L'Hér. plantations are among the most widespread forest plantations and can be damaged by several insect pests. Birds are known to play key roles in top-down control of insect pests. However, virtually nothing is known regarding the interaction of birds and eucalypt associated insects. We developed a molecular assay to detect predation on three of the most widespread eucalypt pests, Gonipterus platensis Marelli (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), Ctenarytaina spatulata Taylor (Hemiptera: Aphalaridae), and C. eucalypti (Maskell 1890) and one parasitoid, Anaphes nitens (Girault) (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae). We were interested in understanding the potential role of birds as suppressing agents of Eucalyptus insect pests and the bird traits driving their predation. For this, we analysed 294 fresh faecal samples from 29 bird species. We detected the presence of these Eucalyptus insects in 23% of the samples. We found no relationship between the local abundance of the target pests and their consumption by birds, except for G. platensis adults, for which we found a positive correlation. We also found that A. nitens is more often detected in birds that are not mainly insectivorous but the detection rates of other eucalypt insects were not affected by either bird body size, main diet type or foraging strata. We show that bird communities are feeding on several eucalypt pests, and despite also preying on the main G. platensis antagonist (A. nitens), this pest is only of economic concern when A. nitens is not present, suggesting that birds might have an overall positive effect on Eucalyptus plantations.

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Data availability

All the sequences have been deposited on BOLD and NCBI with accession numbers provided in the Supplementary information. Data used for analysis is available in at biostudies (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-BSST874) and the R script of analysis will be made available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Joana Verissimo, Cátia Chaves, and Patrícia Ribeiro for the help in the laboratory work. We also thanks to Ricardo Ceia for his comments in an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by the project POCI-01–0145-FEDER-030250, PTDC/ASP-SIL/30250/2017—TOPDEVIL, co-financed by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) through Portugal 2020 Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Programme (POCI). VAM, SF, and LPS were also funded by FCT/MEC and POPH/QREN/FSE through individual research contracts, 2020.02547.CEECIND, 2020.03526.CEECIND, and CEECIND/02064/2017, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigação Em Biodiversidade E Recursos Genéticos, CIBIO, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Universidade Do Porto, Campus de Vairão, Porto, Portugal

    Luis P. da Silva, Daniela Oliveira, Sónia Ferreira & Vanessa A. Mata

  2. BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Campus de Vairão, Porto, Portugal

    Luis P. da Silva, Daniela Oliveira, Sónia Ferreira & Vanessa A. Mata

  3. Centre for Functional Ecology - Science for People & the Planet, CFE, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Luis P. da Silva, Daniela Oliveira & Vanessa A. Mata

  4. RAIZ - Forest and Paper Research Institute, Aveiro, Portugal

    Catarina I. Gonçalves & Carlos Valente

Authors
  1. Luis P. da Silva
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  2. Daniela Oliveira
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  3. Sónia Ferreira
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  4. Catarina I. Gonçalves
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  5. Carlos Valente
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  6. Vanessa A. Mata
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Contributions

LPS and VAM: designed the study. LPS, CIG and CV: collected insects for the DNA reference collection. LPS: performed the bird sampling and data analysis. VAM and DO: designed the diagnostic PCR assay. DO: barcoded reference specimens and performed the screening of faecal samples. SF: processed DNA barcodes and submitted them to online databases. LPS and VAM: led the writing of the manuscript with contribution from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Luis P. da Silva.

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All work was done under the required legal permits, including bird captures and sampling (ringing permit 129/2019 from the Portuguese Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests).

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da Silva, L.P., Oliveira, D., Ferreira, S. et al. Birds as potential suppressing agents of eucalypt plantations’ insect pests. BioControl 67, 571–582 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10526-022-10164-4

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