Josep D Asís

Universidad de Salamanca · Department of Animal Biology, Ecology, Parasitology, Pedology and Agricultural Chemistry

The male and female of a new species of Lonchidia Thomson, 1862, L. atypica Pujade-Villar & de Paz sp. nov., are described from the provinces of Salamanca and Cáceres (Western Spain). Specimens were collected with a G-Vac suction sampler and pitfall traps from traditional almond and cherry orchards. The diagnostic characters of this species are: de...

Agricultural abandonment is one of the main land-use changes in Europe, and its consequences on biodiversity are context- and taxa-dependent. While several studies have worked on this topic, few have focused on traditional orchards, especially in different landscapes and under a Mediterranean climate. In this context, we aimed to determine the effe...

Bees are a diverse group with more than 1000 species known from the Iberian Peninsula. They have increasingly received special attention due to their important role as pollinators and providers of ecosystem services. In addition, various rapid human-induced environmental changes are leading to the decline of some of its populations. However, we kno...

In agricultural systems, linear habitat features and resource shifting over the season can shape insect communities. When evaluating insect assemblages, the use of trait-based approaches allows measuring of the functional component of diversity which, combined with a taxonomical perspective, may help to understand how environmental factors drive co...

To enhance the partial knowledge on blackfly (Diptera: Simuliidae) fauna in Spain it is crucial to collect all the available data on this group to better understand their ecology and distribution over the years. This study presents data from samples collected along the Tormes river basin (western Spain) during the years 1988, 1989 and 1996 and then...

Simulium erythrocephalum (De Geer, 1776) is an arthropod of great medical-sanitary importance due to its haematophagic way of feeding. The adults of this dipterans, which exhibit a marked anthropophilic behaviour, tends to emerge simultaneously, then usually producing massive attacks. In Spain there is a limited knowledge about its distribution and...

Osmia caerulescens is a solitary bee species commonly found in the Iberian Peninsula that seems well-adapted to altered anthropogenic habitats. Using the post-emergence residues present in 965 brood cells coming from 453 nests (reed stems) from 36 cherry orchards in western Spain, we identified the collected pollen, and studied the diet of the spec...

The conversion of traditional land-use systems into more intensive agriculture forms plays a main role in biodiversity loss. Within this framework, organic management has received widespread attention since it is assumed to enhance multiple taxa, including different groups of insects and plants. However, its contribution to the promotion of organis...

Agricultural abandonment and intensification are among the main land-use changes in Europe. Along with these processes, different proposals have been developed to counteract the negative effects derived from agricultural intensification, including organic management. In this context, we aimed to determine how organic management and farmland abandon...

• Osmia caerulescens is a generalist solitary bee well‐adapted to altered anthropogenic environments, and the kleptoparasitic wasp Sapyga quinquepunctata has been cited among its natural enemies. • We analysed offspring characteristics of O. caerulescens and S. quinquepunctata, at population and individual levels, and compared these characteristics...

Freshwater ecosystems are exceptionally threatened habitats and suffer biodiversity losses that exceed those in any other ecosystem. Small waterbodies have been typically neglected and excluded from conservation strategies, even though they are essential for maintaining freshwater biodiversity. Dragonflies are considered effective surrogates of the...

In several groups of insects, body structures related to feeding and oviposition are known to have a hardened cuticle by incorporation of transition metals. However, a functional link between metal enrichment and ecological pressures (i.e., adaptation) has been only rarely shown, opening the possibility that in some lineages, the evolutionary histo...

Some of the negative effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity can be counteracted by the implementation of practices typically associated with organic farming. The efficiency of key ecosystem services, such as natural pest control or pollination, depends on biodiversity and could determine agricultural productivity and food security....

Habitat properties, including crop type, farming system, management practices, or topographic features such as the hillside aspect, may act as environmental filters that select organisms sharing traits compatible with those conditions. The more environmentally-friendly management practices implemented in organic farming seem to benefit a range of t...

Insect brood parasites have evolved a variety of strategies to avoid being detected by their hosts. Few previous studies on cuckoo wasps (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae), which are natural enemies of solitary wasps and bees, have shown that chemical mimicry, i.e., the biosynthesis of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC) that match the host profile, evolved in se...

Under the current scenario of biodiversity loss across agroecosystems, the preservation of ecological infrastructures is crucial to maintain ecosystem functions and deliver ecosystem services such as pollination or biological control of pests, which largely determine agricultural productivity and food security. The role that ecological infrastructu...

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects...

The development of reliable evaluation schemes is essential to assess the status of biodiversity, particularly under the current scenario of biodiversity loss across agroecosystems. In these areas, ecological infrastructures contribute heavily to enhance biodiversity and underlying services, and their contribution depends on their ecological qualit...

A pesar de que España es uno de los países con mayor diversidad de polinizadores silvestres y, que de su conservación depende el futuro de nuestros cultivos y por tanto de nuestra alimentación, lo cierto es que hoy día seguimos sin conocer el estado de conservación de gran parte de esta fauna, una demanda histórica de la sociedad cien- tífica que s...

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects...

In biological control programmes, it is very common to employ multiple species to manage a single insect pest. However, the beneficial effects of natural enemies are not always additive because of several factors, including interspecific competition between these biocontrol agents. For this reason, in the present study we assessed several biologica...

Within agricultural landscapes, ecological infrastructures like hedges, grass strips or wildflower strips, can be essential for the provision of ecosystem services, and their role in maintaining and promoting functional biodiversity has been widely demonstrated in temperate zones. However, although the Mediterranean basin is considered to be a biod...

The effectiveness of natural enemies in controlling pests may be determined by many traits linked to their ability to regu-late the density of their prey. In this respect, the phenomenon of pseudoparasitism, in which female parasitoids reject a host after inserting their ovipositor into it, is fairly common among hymenopteran parasitoids. However,...

Numerous observations and studies that have been carried out in recent decades show that, in addition to bees ((Hymenoptera; Anthophila), other groups of insects play a major role in entomophilous pollination. This article reviews the information and literature available on the contribution of the main groups of pollinators that traditionally have...

Aganaspis daci es un endoparasitoide larvario de tefrítidos identificado en España por primera vez en el año 2009 sobre la mosca mediterránea de la fruta, Ceratitis capitata, por parte del equipo de entomología del IVIA. Desde entonces y dado su uso en otros países para el control poblacional de diversas especies de moscas de las frutas, se ha esta...

Biological parameters of parasitoid wasps have a decisive effect on their effective performance as biological control agents. The mode of reproduction, several mating-dependent biological parameters (such as longevity, fertility, percentage parasitism, induced mortality and population reduction) as well as superparasitism of the parasitoid Aganaspi...

The parasitoid Spalangia cameroni Perkins is a commercially available biocontrol agent of filth flies that is also used, especially through inundative releases, for the biological control of fruit flies. Adequate host selection behaviour is essential to the reproductive performance of parasitoid females, and innate and learned host species preferen...

The parasitoid wasp Spalangia cameroni and the predatory beetle Pseudoophonus rufipes have long been studied for use as biological control agents against the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata, particularly in citrus fruit orchards. Nevertheless, these two species of natural enemies, when competing for a common resource, may experience intr...

The larval–pupal endoparasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is currently the most commonly employed biological control agent against Tephritid fruit flies in the Americas. However, this parasitoid remains largely ignored and is not used in many regions, including the Mediterranean Basin. In this study, the potential of D....

The effect of environmental factors is essential to the success of parasitoids as biological control agents, as it determines their foraging activity, development, and survival. The larval-pupal parasitoid wasp Aganaspis daci (Weld) (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) is known to have a very low fertility (i.e., offspring production) in the field in certain M...

Females of most aculeate Hymenoptera mate only once and males are therefore under a strong competitive pressure which is expected to favour the evolution of rapid detection of virgin females. In several bee species, the cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profile exhibited by virgin females elicits male copulation attempts. However, it is still unknown how...

The percentage parasitism, fertility and induced mortality (mortality of host pupae attributed to parasitoids, from which adults do not emerge) of the parasitoid Aganaspis daci (Weld) infesting larvae of Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) were studied under laboratory and greenhouse conditions for temperature, host location (larvae provided in artifici...

The most harmful hymenopteran pests of Pinus sylvestris L. are conifer sawflies from the family Diprionidae, including the widespread Diprion pini (L.). Natural enemies of this pest are still poorly known in many European areas where attacks occur. We studied the egg parasitoids of D. pini at four sites in two mountainous areas of Spain: the Sierra...

Bees are important pollinators that use resources from both cropped and natural habitats in agroecosystems, and the amount of extant resources have proven to be critical in the adoption of parental investment decisions. Thus, the mixed effects that resource distribution and the organisms’ foraging and dispersal movements have on parental decisions...

Dicyphus geniculatus (Fieber) (Heteroptera Miridae) is a Mediterranean mirid that has been observed in public green areas in towns of eastern and western provinces of Spain feeding on whiteflies and thrips on Dianthus caryophyllus L. carnations. In this article, the relative importance of feeding behaviour with respect to the duration of nymphal de...

In prey-predator systems where the interacting individuals are both fliers, the flight performance of both participants heavily influences the probability of success of the predator (the prey is captured) and of the prey (the predator is avoided). While the flight morphology (an estimate of flight performance) of predatory wasps has rarely been add...

Rough matrices containing the data used to perform the analyses. (XLS)

Spalangia cameroni Perkins (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) is sold commercially as a biocontrol agent of filth flies, including the house fly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae). For this reason, S. cameroni is mass-reared for inundative releases to control harmful flies. However, the mass-rearing protocols include very little information on the in...

Abstract—Spalangia cameroni Perkins (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) is a pupal parasitoid of the Medfly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedmann) (Diptera: Tephritidae), one of the principal pests of Spanish agriculture. Spalangia cameroni is a potential biocontrol agent for this pest if methods can be developed to mass-rear it effectively on C. capitata. Here, w...

A ''space-for-time substitution'' was used to analyse how the communities of Spheciformes wasps varied in different diversity parameters for a period of 15 years after a summer wildfire in a Mediterranean ag-roecosystem (Arribes del Duero, western Spain), employ-ing Malaise traps and yellow pan traps to sample the communities. Both the habitat and...

Although diet has traditionally been considered as a property of the species or populations as a whole, there is nowadays extensive knowledge that individual specialization is widespread among animal populations. Nevertheless, the factors determining the shape of interactions within food webs remain largely undiscovered, especially in predatory ins...

The final instar larva of Synergus filicornis (Cameron) (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae: Synergini) is described and illustrated. Morphological structures of a diagnostic value are discussed. The most remarkable character states shown by the mature larva of this species lie in the integument, which unlike the rest of described cynipoid mature larvae, prese...

Research into the driving forces behind spatial arrangement of wasp nests has considered abiotic environmental factors, but seldom investigated attraction or repulsion towards conspecifics or heterospecifics. Solitary female digger wasps (Hymenoptera) often nest in dense aggregations, making these insects good models to study this topic. Here, we a...

MATERIAL Y MÉTODOS • Los estados de las fases preimaginales fueron obtenidos a partir de una cría de laboratorio establecida en el IVIA. • En la preparación del material se siguieron los métodos de Tormos et al. (2009). • Las fotos fueron obtenidas con un cámara Leica EC3 y a partir de un microscopio eléctrónico de barrido (JEOL JSM-5410), trabajan...

Aganaspis daci and Aganaspis pelleranoi (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) are important parasitoids of fruit flies. Here we studied, with light and scanning electron microscopy, aspects of their morphology that could help with plans to mass rear and thus contribute to improved pest control (preimaginal phases) and to shed light on parasitoid-pest relationsh...

Landscape, in terms of crop diversity, together with spatial heterogeneity, connectivity and the proportion of natural elements all play a key role in the quality of the agricultural matrix. The abundant resources derived from the high productivity associated with cultivated lands within agricultural landscapes - formed by mosaics comprising small...

The mating systems of mutillid wasps have rarely been studied. Here we present information on the mating system of Nemka viduata. At a site in southern Spain, many males of this species were seen flying over host (digger wasp) nest aggregations while searching for females. Male activity was greatest in the early morning and late afternoon, when fem...

Nests of central-place foraging Hymenoptera are attacked by a wide range of parasitoids, kleptoparasites and predators. Since the resource use differs among such functional groups (host larvae, provisions or adult hosts), the activity patterns could vary accordingly with the different “best-match” with the host resources. Alternatively, species wit...

Bembix is a cosmopolitan genus with more than 300 species distributed all over the world. The females of these wasps dig burrows in the ground and hunt for flies to feed their larvae. Current knowledge of the nesting behaviour of most Palaearctic species (around 50) is limited. In this study, we provide data on the nest structure, nesting activity,...

Although inter-individual diet variation is common in predatory wasp populations, the factors accounting for such variation are still largely unknown. Here, we asked if paired diet dissimilarity in three species of digger wasps correlates with morphological distance and inter-nest distance, two factors previously linked to diet partitioning in vert...

The frequency of superparasitism and its effects on the quality of laboratory-reared Spalangia cameroni (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) parasitoids were investigated under laboratory conditions. Numerous variables were measured, such as the number of 'ovip holes' per host as a measure of superparasitism. Adult emergence and sex ratio, as well as female...

1. Individual foraging behaviour defines the use of resources by a given population and its variation in different ways such as, for example, unpredictable interactions between taxon-biased and size-biased selection. Here we investigated how the environmental availability of prey and individual specialization, for both prey taxa and prey size, shap...

Bembix merceti, a central-place forager that captures dipterans to feed its larvae, could be considered a suboptimal forager. The females tend to optimize their provisioning flights, capturing prey in proportions different from those present in the surrounding environment. These wasps make a positive selection of families of flies with greater mean...

Se describen diferentes estados (un huevo, dos larvas maduras y una larva inmadura) de las fases preimaginales de dos especies de Liris. La larva madura de L. niger (Fabricius) es muy similar a su larva inmadura, ya descrita, distinguiéndose de la larva madura de L. festinans praetermissus (Richards) por la presencia en esta última de bandas pariet...