Guangyun Li

Southwest University · College of Plant Protection

Predator-induced stress shows pronounced effects on prey by inducing behavioural, morphological, and physiological responses. Increasing evidence shows that these antipredator responses may also lead to changes in life-history traits such as aging and lifespan. However, little is known about how predator cues influence the fitness of preys and thei...

Background Intermittent fasting (IF) is receiving increasing attention as an alternative to continuous restriction of calories because of its benefits in aging-related disease prevention and lifespan extension. However, whether both sexes with sexual dimorphism have similar response to IF have rarely been assayed. In this study, we determined how d...

Bigger animals tend to live longer than the small ones across species, but whether body size also has a robust relationship with survival within species remains to be determined. Here, the association between body size and fitness traits was examined through two food treatments (starvation and fed ad libitum) for both virgin and mated spider mites,...

Biological control of Tetranychus urticae relies mainly on specialist predators that are capable of coping with the dense web of spider mites. The role of generalist predators, however, has been less studied. To evaluate the development and predation of immature Neoseiulus cucumeris on Tetranychus urticae eggs, three experiments were conducted in t...

Tomato red spider mite Tetranychus evansi Baker and Pritchard (Acari: Tetranychidae) is a phytophagous pest that causes severe damage to Solanaceous plants worldwide, resulting in significant economic losses. In this study, the maximum entropy model was used to predict the potential current (1970–2000) and future (2021–2060) global distribution of...

Background The biological control agent Phytoseiulus persimilis is a commercialized specialist predator of two agricultural pest mite species Tetranychus urticae and Tetranychus evansi. Biocontrol of these pest species by P. persimilis has achieved success in biological control in some areas. However, the lack of precise information about the influ...

The social-sexual environment is well known for its influence on the survival of organisms by modulating their reproductive output. However, whether it affects survival indirectly through a variety of cues without physical contact and its influence relative to direct interaction remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated both the indire...

BACKGROUND Entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) treatment of plants may affect the survival and feeding preferences of herbivorous pests. However, comprehensive studies on the fitness across their entire life cycle, feeding behavior, and physiological changes in herbivores consuming EPF‐treated plants within the tripartite interactions of EPF, plants, and...

Parental care behavior has evolved as a life history strategy to improve reproductive success, particularly in organisms facing challenging environments. However, the variation in maternal care, such as egg-guarding behavior in response to the social environment and the associated ecological consequence of competition, remains largely unknown. This...

This chapter presents a synthesis of the concepts and potential of ecostacking, as well as outlining future strategies to implement the ecostacking techniques. The key methods covered in the book include well established techniques such as management of botanical diversity (e.g. cover crops, intercrops, trap crops, crop plant genetic diversity), ju...

Aphids, the important global agricultural pests, harbor abundant resources of symbionts that can improve the host adaptability to environmental conditions, also control the interactions between host aphid and natural enemy, resulting in a significant decrease in efficiency of biological control. The facultative symbiont Serratia symbiotica has a st...

Penthaleus major (Dugés) is a significant agricultural pest that attacks various pasture, vegetable, and crop plants. Temperature plays a critical role in the life history of P. major. However, there is limited understanding of its life table at different temperatures and cold tolerance. This study aimed to elucidate the performance of P. major by...

The predatory mites Neoseiulus barkeri (Hughes) and the predatory thrips Scolothrips takahashii (Priesner) are known as potential biocontrol agents for the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae (Koch). These two predator species occur simultaneously on crops in agricultural ecosystems and are proved to be involved in life-stage specific intra...

Predatory mites are important biological control agents for phytophagous mites and several small insect pests on vegetables, while the control efficiency is often limited by the changeable or fluctuating environment, especially under the threat of global warming. To mitigate the undesired impacts of high temperature environment, a high-temperature...

The predatory mite, Neoseiulus barkeri, is more tolerant to the entomopathogenic fungus, Beauveria bassiana, than small sap-feeding pests. Infection of insects by B. bassiana can induce insect innate immune response, and the spätzle protein (Spz), an important ligand of the insect Toll pathway, has been demonstrated to play an important role in ins...

The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a cosmopolitan, polyphagous agricultural pest that poses serious threats to agricultural production globally. Beauveria bassiana , an entomopathogenic fungi (EPF), cannot only directly kill a variety of pests but also inhibit the occurrence of pests as fungal endophytes within plants. In this study, we explored how th...

Whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a polyphagous super pest, which causes serious threat to agricultural production globally. Beauveria bassiana , as entomopathogenic fungi (EPF), can not only directly kill a variety of pests, but also inhibit the occurrence of pests as fungal endophytes within plants. In this study, we explored how the introduction of B....

Blattisocius dendriticus (Acari: Blattisociidae) is a predatory gamasid mite with the potential for the biological control of mites attacking stored products. However, its interactions with its cannibalistic conspecifics are poorly understood. In this study, we determined the effects of predation risk from cannibalistic conspecifics on the survival...

Predatory mites were the second largest group of natural enemies, where some species have been commercialized and used worldwide for pest biological control. Two important predatory mite species Phytoseiulus persimilis and Neoseiulus cucumeris have been introduced to China for the control of mite and small insect pests in greenhouses and open field...

The non-consumptive effects of predator-induced stress can influence a variety of life-history traits. Many previous studies focused only on short-term effects such as development and reproductive rates. Recent studies have showed that long-term predation stress (given during the whole life of the prey) and short-term predation stress (provided dur...

Pollen as one of the most important supplementary food benefits the generalist predators in many aspects. However, little is known about the performance of generalist predators with type IV lifestyle when they are reared continuously on prey supplemented with pollen for many generations. In this study, the life history traits of the predatory mites...

Trade-off theory has long been the central to evolutionary biology and is extensively employed to explain the correlations between life-history traits. It is generally accepted that trade-off occurs when one trait cannot increase without a decrease in another. In this study, we collected data on spider mites (70 papers for females and 35 papers for...

Sex dimorphism is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and can be influenced by environmental factors. However, relatively little is known about how the degree and direction of sex difference vary with environmental factors, including food quality and temperature. With the spider mites from the family Tetranychidae as subjects, the sex difference of li...

Numerous experimental life history studies on ageing are mainly biased on two classical models—fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen) and nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (Maupas)—with relatively little attention given to other organisms with different life-history characters. Two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychida...

Establishment and maintenance of the natural enemy are critical for successful biological control of pests on plants without alternative food for predators. Great efforts have been devoted to exploring suitable supplementary food for predators. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of using Tyrophagus curvipenis (Fain and Fauvel) (Acari: Acar...

Predator-prey interactions have long been of great interest to ecologists. Although the direct consumptive effects have received extensive research, indirect influences of odour derived from their conspecifics and prey on predators have largely been underestimated and overlooked. In this study, the indirect effects of predator-prey interactions wer...

Sexual interaction is an important activity that determines the reproductive schedule of organisms and can ultimately influence the fitness traits of both sexes. Although the influence of sexual interaction on the fitness of females has been extensively determined, little is known about the effects on males, which often have different mating strate...

In augmentative biocontrol, more generalists are being investigated for their potential in pest control. Although other food sources such as supplementary food may enhance the survival of generalists, whether they will affect their predation capacity is still an open question. Here, we investigated the influence of Typha orientalis pollen on the pr...

A list of type depositories of new mite species published in two journals (Systematic & Applied Acarology and Zootaxa) during the last five years (2012–2016) is presented in this paper. The 1370 new species are deposited unevenly among 134 collections. The top collection is the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg...

A list of of type localities and depositories of new species of the mite order Sarciptiformes published in two journals (Zootaxa and Systematic & Applied Acarology) during 2013–2015 is presented in this paper, and trends and patterns of new species are summarised. The 242 new species are distributed unevenly among 50 families, with 62% of the total...