New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science abstracts
Ancistrocerus gazella (Hymenoptera: Vespoidea: Eumenidae):
a potentially useful biological control agent for leafrollers
Planotortrix octo, P. excessana, Ctenopseustis obliquana,
C. herana, and Epiphyas postvittana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)
in New Zealand
A. C. HARRIS
Otago Museum New Zealand
P.O. Box 6202
Dunedin, New Zealand
Abstract Ancistrocerus gazella (Panzer 1798) was found
to prey almost exclusively on caterpillars of the lepidopterous family
Tortricidae. This family includes New Zealand's most damaging pests of fruit
crops--the leafroller moths
Planotortrix octo, P. excessana, Ctenopseustis
obliquana, C. herana, and
Epiphyas postvittana. In Central Otago,
A. gazella is limited primarily by an absence of nesting sites.
When artificial trap nests consisting of small holes bored through blocks of
straight-grained wood taped together in bundles of 4-64 traps, and larger
compound nests consisting of blocks of wood through which 64 evenly-spaced
holes were drilled, were placed at a height of 1.5 m in orchards, fields, and
open places where
A. gazella occurred, the trap nests were filled
with P.
octo, P. excessana, C. obliquana, and E.
postvittana
(> 90% of prey) and much lower numbers of other Tortricidae. A 64-hole
nest was set up in the wild where
A. gazella was plentiful until
all holes were filled, 18 days later, as indicated by plugs of mud across the
nest entrances. At that stage, the nest was removed to an abandoned orchard in
another locality. After the second generation
A. gazella females
emerged and mated, they filled a new nest placed beside the one in which they
were raised with leafrollers from the fruit trees. Their old nest also was
reused. It is suggested that
A. gazella can be used to control
all pest leafroller species in New Zealand berry crops in integrated management
systems, with reduced use of insecticides and in conjunction with sex phermone
mating disruption techniques.
Keywords Ancistrocerus gazella; Tortricidae;
biological control; leafrollers; berry fruit; trapnesting techniques; new
control method
New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticulrural Science, 1994, Vol. 22:
235-238
0114-0671/94/2203-0225 $2.50/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand
1994
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