Plant-Provided Food for Carnivorous Insects: A Protective Mutualism and its Applications

Wäckers, F. L., P. C. J. van Rijn & J. Bruin (Eds), 2005. Plant-Provided Food for Carnivorous Insects: A Protective Mutualism and its Applications. Cambridge University Press, xii + 356 p., 17.5 × 25 cm, hardcover, US$130.00, ISBN 0-521-81941-5.

Janzen (1966) documented that plants can benefit from attracting, provisioning, and harboring carnivorous insects which protect their host plants against herbivores. This research definitively confirmed earlier suspicions by Darwin and others that plant fitness can be enhanced through plant-insect mutualisms with the plants providing food sources for carnivorous insects and in return these arthropods serving as "bodyguards" for the plants. This discovery is among the most compelling in the field of plant-insect interactions and holds tantalizing promise for improving control of plant-feeding insect pests. If such mutualisms could be fostered in agricultural settings, herbivorous pests could be managed effectively with fewer chemical inputs and the cost, both economic and environmental, of insect control would decrease.

While few crop species go to the extremes of Janzen's acacias to harbor insect bodyguards, research has established that natural enemy diversity can be promoted and maintained at a community level by increasing plant species diversity and including flowering plants in the landscape. Higher plant diversity increases the diversity of insects, including beneficial natural enemies, and flowering plants provide nectar and/or pollen that can increase longevity and fecundity of natural enemies allowing them to kill more herbivores. This is the general principle and unifying theme running throughout Plant-Provided Food for Carnivorous Insects: A Protective Mutualism and its Applications, a new volume edited by Felix L. Wäckers, Paul C.J. van Rijn and Jan Bruin.

This book summarizes in eleven chapters current knowledge on the influence of plant-provided food on natural enemy communities, the benefits that can accrue from provisioning food for insect natural enemies,...