parasitoids

A few weeks ago you were sitting back admiring your freshly planted garden. Neat little rows of tomato, pepper, squash, and cucumber plants accompanied by flowers and herbs were all planted in view from your back deck. As you sat there basking in the evening sun, relishing in your hard work, a little moth fluttered from flower to flower sipping nectar.

hornworm moth — *A hawkmoth, the Carolina Sphinx, is the adult form of a tobacco hornworm. Photo: Mike Raupp, University of Maryland, Department of Entomology*

With her hummingbird like flutters, a Carolina Sphinx Moth floated through your garden, unassumingly laying her eggs on your newly planted tomato and pepper plants. Within a few days, from her little green eggs emerged a tiny but very hungry green caterpillar.

hornworms — *Hornworm caterpillars. Photo: Rachel Rhodes, University of Maryland Extension*

Since that day, the ravenous little green hornworm caterpillar has spent his days munching away, perfectly hidden by the copious green foliage of your tomato plants, growing bigger and bigger. You begin to notice stems of complete defoliation. Maybe you think it’s a bunny or deer having a nighttime nibble as the little green caterpillar stays camouflaged, until the moment you notice the red-tipped horn and the very large green body of a caterpillar measuring almost 4” in length hanging on your prize winning tomato plant. Continue reading →

Summary: Learn how University of Maryland researchers and University of Maryland Extension (UME) Master Gardeners collaborate on research to reduce brown marmorated stink bug populations in Maryland. Project Stink-be-Gone, by Rebeccah Waterworth

As temperatures cool, many of you probably have had to share your homes with bugs. One of the most notorious of these squatters is brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) (Fig. 1). It is also a serious pest of many economically important crops. Paula Shrewsbury and I are interested in developing sustainable pest management practices for BMSB, particularly biological control using small wasps (Fig. 2). These critters are also known as parasitoids, and they lay their own eggs inside a stink bug egg. The baby wasp (larva) inside the stink bug egg eats the developing stink bug. After about 10 days, the wasp larvae have become adults, chew their way out of the bug eggs, and fly off to look for new bug eggs to parasitize! Stink bugs do not hatch from the eggs where wasps emerged (see the video at the end of this post).