Blas LavanderoUniversidad de Talca · Instituto de Ciencias Biológicas
Blas Lavandero
Doctor of Philosophy
About
116
Publications
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Introduction
My main research interests relate to Agroecology. Focusing on natural enemy movement, between crops, between crop-associated habitats and natural environments, at different scales, and the relation to biological control. Using molecular markers, we seek to understand the links between natural enemies, pests and other hosts/pest, as well as the related vegetation around agricultural systems.We are also using a transdisciplinary approach to increase the adoption of agroecological practices.
Additional affiliations
December 2007 - March 2020
Education
February 2002 - February 2005
Publications
Publications (116)
Agricultural land use and its disruption of natural landscapes threatens the provision of ecosystem services, such as biological control by natural enemies because of habitat simplification and management intensification. The notion that surrounding non-crop habitat may improve biological control of crop pests by beneficial natural enemies (eg., pr...
Microbiome insect research has grown rapidly over the last years thanks to advances in next-generation sequencing. The bacterial microbiome inhabiting insects often involves mutualistic associations between the insect hosts and maternally transmitted symbiotic bacteria. Among insect groups, aphids are the most studied regarding insect symbiosis, bu...
Plutella xylostella L. is the most widely distributed lepidopteran species worldwide,
causing economic damage to brassica crops of nearly 4-5 billion dollars. Its control has
been limited due to its high environmental adaptability, short life cycle, multiple
generations per season and resistance to insecticides. Known biological control
program...
The following work consists of the description of four new species of the genus Pseudephedrus Starý (Aphidiinae), endemic to South America, associated with endemic callaphidid aphid hosts. The descriptions of the new species are based on new samples from Chile and Argentina. The new species described here are as follows: Pseudephedrus staryi sp.n.,...
Diversification measures are widely recognized for their potential to enhance the resilience of agri-food production systems under global change. Nitrogen-fixing legumes commonly feature in diversification schemes, where they exert positive impacts on soil structure, nutrient retention, carbon sequestration or fertilizer reduction. Though legumes a...
Vegetational diversification strategies promote positive effects on ecosystem service provision by establishing winter refuges and alternative food resources for natural enemy populations. Cover crops are encouraged as a sustainable practice that can stimulate the early recruitment of natural enemies. However, evidence of the dispersion of natural...
Dinocampus coccinellae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) can parasitize over 50 species of ladybeetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), including the invasive Harmonia axyridis. The biological invasion success of H. axyridis has been in part attributed to weak control by natural enemies (Enemy Release Hypothesis). The main aim of this study was to examine (i)...
Simple Summary
Natural enemies of major pests such as parasitoids require sugar-rich food for development and reproduction. In agricultural fields, honeydew excreted by aphids is often the predominant sugar source that parasitoids can consume. Moreover, honeydew can constitute a cue used by parasitoid females to find their aphid host. However, in s...
By increasing plant diversity in agroecosystems, it has been proposed that one can enhance and stabilize ecosystem functioning by increasing natural enemies’ diversity. Food web structure determines ecosystem functioning as species at different trophic levels are linked in interacting networks. We compared the food web structure and composition of...
Facultative bacterial endosymbionts are prevalent in aphid pest species and key organisms for the rapid adaptation to changing environment conditions under agricultural management. Facultative endosymbiont interactions allow beneficial phenotypes of insect hosts, providing resistance against natural enemies, fungal infections as well as enhanced re...
Biological control is an alternative strategy to control Cacopsylla bidens. The aim of this study was to untanglethe trophic network involving C. bidens as prey. Molecular techniques along with predator activity surveys were employed to evaluate predation on psylla. Feeding on C. bidens was detected for five predators: Chrysoperla externa, Chrysopi...
Climate warming is considered to be among the most serious of anthropogenic stresses to the environment, because it not only has direct effects on biodiversity, but it also exacerbates the harmful effects of other human‐mediated threats. The associated consequences are potentially severe, particularly in terms of threats to species preservation, as...
All species interact in complex antagonistic or mutualistic networks that may be driven by turnover in species composition due to spatiotemporal environmental filtering. Therefore, studying differences in insect communities along environmental gradients may improve our understanding of the abiotic and biotic factors that shape the structure of trop...
Insectivorous birds provide key ecosystem services for agricultural production, such as biological pest control. However, habitat loss and degradation by agriculture are among the main causes of biodiversity loss globally, including the recent decline in bird populations. Habitat loss has particularly affected insectivorous birds due to the associa...
Background
Cover crops can be used as a habitat management strategy to enhance the natural enemies and their temporal synchronization with a target pest. We examined the effect of winter oat intercropping within organic plum orchards on the natural enemy abundance and seasonal dynamics on the biological control of plum aphids in spring in Central C...
Birds provide important ecosystem services in many ecosystems, including important pest control effects on productive systems. The typically low bird diversity observed in intensive agricultural landscapes renders them more susceptible to pests that cause important economic losses. Although these pests have traditionally been controlled using chemi...
Diversifying agroecosystems through habitat management inside or outside production fields can provide alternative hosts and/or prey for natural enemies. In semi-natural habitats, parasitoids may find alternative host-plant complexes (HPC) that could allow their development when pest hosts are scarce in the field. However, morphological and physiol...
There are many different practices that contribute to conservation biological control, but little is known about their complementarity. We tested the effects of providing food and alternative hosts to parasitoids by intercropping a plum orchard with companion plants. Oats and vetch were intercropped into the orchard either as single-species (oats o...
In the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the concept of sustainable development, understood as the balance between economic, social, and environmental factors interacting in space and time, was recognized by representatives from 179 countries as vital to sustain human life without compromising the planet (United Nations, 1992). Now...
Parasitoid adults need to frequently feed on sugar sources to ensure their survival, dispersal and reproduction. However, not all resources have the same quality: nectar is generally thought as a rich, highly beneficial resource, while homopteran-produced honeydew is considered as a lower quality resource for parasitoids. Sugar-rich resources such...
In ecosystems, deciding to search for food or for hosts compels parasitoids to a major trade-off in their decision-making between their future and immediate reproductions. If they forage for food, especially carbohydrates sources, parasitoids increase their lifespan, acquire energy to disperse and to search for hosts later on, and uptake nutrients...
The onset of an overwintering strategy to overcome cold temperatures of a species of ectotherms can include remaining active or entering diapause. This in turn will depend on the relative costs of each strategy and therefore, could differ among populations along a latitudinal gradient. Thus, expecting higher levels of diapause in the coldest condit...
Understanding the role of facultative endosymbionts on the host’s ecology has been the main aim of the research in symbiont–host systems. However, current research on host–endosymbiont dynamics has failed to examine the genetic background of the hosts and its effect on host–endosymbiont associations in real populations. We have addressed the season...
The nectar provision hypothesis predicts that the introduction of nectar-producing plants in agroecosystems benefits parasitoid populations in the field and enhances biological control. Intercropping is a common crop diversification scheme that may bring complementary nectar sources for parasitoids and increase herbivore pest control. For instance,...
1. Investigations in nutritional ecology often require the identification of animal feeding patterns in natural conditions (what, where, and when do animals eat). Thus, methods are needed to trace not only individual resource uptake but also the relative use of different resources in a population or community.
2. Recent biochemical developments al...
Ecological intensification has emerged as a new paradigm for agricultural production that promotes ensuring the provision of ecosystem services mediated by biodiversity to enhancing crop yield. Birds provide critical ecosystem services for agricultural production such as biological pest control, a role that has been recently highlighted. However, a...
The use of cover crops can promote the abundance and early arrival of populations of natural enemies. Cereal cover crops between orchards rows could encourage the early arrival of the parasitoid Aphidius platensis, as they offer alternative winter hosts (e.g., Rhopalosiphum padi), enhancing the control of Myzus persicae in spring. However, the pref...
Background:
Parasitoid wasps have fascinating life cycles and play an important role in trophic networks, yet little is known about their genome content and function. Parasitoids that infect aphids are an important group with the potential for biological control. Their success depends on adapting to develop inside aphids and overcoming both host a...
Abundance and diversity of natural enemies increases with higher landscape complexity. However, more species can also increase negative interactions such as intraguild predation (IGP), which could be detrimental to pest control. Direct observations of these trophic interactions are still lacking. In the present study, we employed DNA-based gut cont...
The provision of refuges for natural enemies could be a key aspect for the management of the woolly apple aphid [Eriosoma lanigerum (Hausmann, 1802)] (Hemiptera: Aphididae) in apple orchards. The present study assesses the effects of Pyracantha coccinea (Rosaceae) (firethorn) adjacent to apple orchards as this extra-orchard habitat would positively...
When a guild of species exploit the same limited resources, interspecific competition induces the exclusion of inferior competitors, in which case, interspecific recognition mechanisms are needed. Here, we address resource partitioning and interspecific competition among three main solitary parasitoid species attacking the same host resource, the a...
Background
Parasitoid wasps have fascinating life cycles and play an important role in trophic networks, yet little is known about their genome content and function. Parasitoids that infect aphids are an important group with the potential for biocontrol, and infecting aphids requires overcoming both aphid defenses and their defensive endosymbionts....
Stable and diversified agroecosystems provide farmers with important ecosystem services, which are unfortunately being lost at an alarming rate under the current conventional agriculture framework. Nevertheless, this concern can be tackled by using ecological intensification as an alternative strategy to recuperate ecosystem services (e.g., biologi...
Los cultivos de cobertura pueden ser una alternativa de manejo en el control biológico de áfidos, al favorecer la diversidad y actividad de enemigos naturales, y al ser hospederos alternativos que proporcionan refugio y alimento. Los parasitoides son usados con frecuencia en el control biológico por su especialización y eficiencia. Los hospederos a...
Los parasitoides como Aphidius ervi (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) necesitan recursos en carbohidratos para maximizar su adecuación biológica y mantener su papel de controlador biológico de pulgones hospederos como Sitobion avenae (Hemiptera: Aphididae).
La hipótesis de aprovisionamiento en néctar (Heimpel & Jervis 2005) sugiere que los parasitoides y...
Most parasitoid wasps rely on plant-derived food sources such as nectar to ensure their survival and dispersal. However, in conventional single crop farming, flower resources are scarce and often restricted to the border of fields. Lack of such resources leads to a lower abundance and performance of parasitoids, especially in the centre of the fiel...
Significance
Decades of research have fostered the now-prevalent assumption that noncrop habitat facilitates better pest suppression by providing shelter and food resources to the predators and parasitoids of crop pests. Based on our analysis of the largest pest-control database of its kind, noncrop habitat surrounding farm fields does affect multi...
The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on p...
Bacterial endosymbionts that produce important phenotypic effects on their hosts are common among plant sap-sucking insects. Aphids have become a model system of insect-symbiont interactions. However, endosymbiont research has focused on a few aphid species, making it necessary to make greater efforts to other aphid species through different region...
Summary of total number of reads per aphid samples of S. avenae and R. padi for representative OTUs and GenBank accession number of representative sequences
Accession numbers and references for the Pseudomonas 16S rRNA sequences used to construct the phylogenetic tree
Landscape contexts with high complexity may promote diversity of natural enemies, although the effect on biocontrol remains under discussion. Although biocontrol of Sitobion avenae is a well-studied system, little is known about the temporal effect of landscape context on the natural enemy assemblages. In a previous study, we showed a positive effe...
The diversity and distribution of the genetic variation in forest phytophagous insect populations can be highly sensitive to forest fragmentation. This should be particularly evident for monophagous insects living on endangered host plants.
The aphid Neuquenaphis staryi uses the tree Nothofagus alessandrii , commonly named Ruil, exclusively as a ho...
1. The relationship between endosymbionts and insects represent complex eco‐evolutionary interactions. Vertically transmitted endosymbionts can be a source of evolutionary novelty by conferring ecologically important traits to their insect hosts, such as protection against natural enemies. Host–endosymbiont associations could constitute an adaptive...
Abstract
A. Peñalver-Cruz, S. Ortiz-Martínez, C. Villegas, Ž. Tomanović, F. Zepeda-Paulo, V. Žikić,
and B. Lavandero. 2017. Abundance and prevalence of Aphidius avenae (Hymenoptera:
Braconidae: Aphidiinae) in Chile. Cien. Inv. Agr. 44(2): 207-214. During the samplings
described here, Aphidius avenae (=picipes) (Haliday, 1834) was collected. This sp...
Complete lists of differentially expressed genes for Aphidius ervi
Supplementary File
Table S2: Final number of reads from each library used in DE analysis.
Figure S1. Sample correlation matrix heatmap for all Aphidius ervi libraries.
Aphidius ervi filtered transcriptome assembly
The molecular mechanisms that allow generalist parasitoids to exploit many, often very distinct hosts are practically unknown. The wasp Aphidius ervi, a generalist koinobiont parasitoid of aphids, was introduced from Europe into Chile in the late 1970s to control agriculturally important aphid species. A recent study showed significant differences...
Background. Parasitoids are frequently used in biological control due to the fact that they are considered host specific and highly efficient at attacking their hosts. As they spend a significant part of their life cycle within their hosts, feeding habits and life history of their host can promote specialization via host-race formation (sequential...
Principal component analysis
Distribution of Aphidius ervi biotypes in the morphospace defined by PC1 and PC2 axes. The total variability explained for PC1 + PC2 = 37.39%.
Cannonical variate analysis
Distribution of Aphidius ervi biotypes in the morphospace defined by CV1 and CV2 axes. The total variability explained for CV 1 + CV 2 = 61.4%.
Inbreeding frequently reduces the fitness of organisms, but little is known about how this phenomenon can affect the biological control. Host fidelity provides an adaptive advantage to aphid parasitoids, allowing females to find their aphid host more quickly in heterogeneous environments. This trait is mediated by the learning of signals, mainly ch...
Codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.), is the key pest of pome fruits worldwide. Commercial orchards are subjected to management practices for this pest, such as insecticides prays and mating disruption. Codling moth populations in commercial orchards are maintained by adult immigration from neighbouring unmanaged host-plants. Therefore, identificatio...
Los principios básicos del control de plagas en sistemas orgánicos, consideran la adopción de prácticas ecológicos especificadas por estándares de producción internacional. Se debe poner énfasis en el uso de múltiple y variadas tácticas incorporadas dentro del diseño del sistema de cultivo para prevenir los niveles de daño, minimizando así el uso d...
As biological invasions, intentional introductions often result in a loss of genetic diversity in the new founder populations. In classical biological control programs, natural enemies introduced into novel environments are likely to suffer from population bottlenecks. Unlike invasive populations, individuals for biological control are typically ke...
Facultative bacterial endosymbionts in insects have been under intense study during the last years. Endosymbionts can modify the insect's phenotype, conferring adaptive advantages under environmental stress. This seems particularly relevant for a group of worldwide agricultural aphid pests, because endosymbionts modify key fitness related traits, i...
Codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is the key pest of apple and walnut production worldwide. Among other variables, successful management of this pest is dependent on adult dispersal at the local scale. Body mass and wing geometric morphology were evaluated on female and male codling moth adults collected from apple and...
Host specialization in aphid parasitoids is important both from a theoretical and an applied point of view. It arises from various ecological mechanisms involving their interactions with aphids, host plants, and endosymbiotic bacteria, as well as with potential competitors and enemies. From an applied point of view, host specialization in aphid par...
Host recognition and use in female parasitoids strongly relies on host fidelity, a
plastic behavior which can significantly restrict the host preferences of parasitoids,
thus reducing the gene flow between parasitoid populations attacking different
insect hosts. However, the effect of migrant males on the genetic
differentiation of populations has...
The paper presents 19 identified species of aphid parasitoids belonging to eight genera in the high altitudes of Central and South America, along with seven unidentified species. Faunal analysis indicates that most of the lowland areas are inhabited by a set of pan-tropical, cosmopolitan, and Nearctic parasitoid aphid associations, whereas the high...