Meloidae Gyllenhaal, 1810 (Coleoptera) presents a complex biology, but despite this, after decades there have been no significant advances in the understanding of its ecology or distribution, information on which the most basic conservation tools are based. Also, the discover of pseudocryptic complexes has turned the current situation even more difficult. In this delicate global change scenario, new generation of knowledge is pressing. A literature study has been carried out to summarize for the first time all known impacts. Also, samplings were carried out from 2012 and are still on development, with the help of Citizen Science. At least 32 species are suffering from human impacts, mainly habitat fragmentation due to an aggressive urban development and extensive agriculture with use of pesticides. Concretely for meloids of the Iberian Peninsula, more than 30% are endemic, many of them threatened: The information is in general, very brief, with 9 species having a greater coverage of information than the rest. Further studies are needed urgently.

The parasitoid Diachasmimorpha longicaudata is an important fruit fly control agent, being responsable for the pest population reduction in the field and, therefore, insecticide mitigation. The control based on natural products, as the aqueous extract produced from Agave sisalana dried residue, are candidates to be integrated to fruit flies management. However, little is known about the influence of such extracts on natural enemies. Thus, this investigation evaluated the influence of the extract from A. sisalana dried residue on D. longicaudata. The experiement was carried out following a randomized block design. For each repetition, it was used 24 guava fruits (Psidium guajava L.), all previously infested by Ceratitis capitata. The fruits were treated with the 5% extract (12 fruits). Additionally, 12 fruits treated only with water were considered the control set. All the fruits were offered in a cage for three hours, period when it was observed and quantified the number of female parasitoid visits on them. This experiment was repeated for 5 days. The quantification and sex separation of emerged parasitoid adults were made 14 days after offering the fruits. To the data analysis, as the total number of parasitoids and number of its females, it was applied the General Linear Model with Poisson distribution. There was no difference between the treatments about the number of emerged parasitoids. However, the mean of visits on the fruits differed between the tretaments, showing 3.8 to control and 2.6 to the extract treatment, suggesting a toxic effect in the last one.

This study combined morphological traits with morphometric measurements to identify Amitermes species collected inside transects laid in three parks: Fosse aux Lions, Galangashie and Fazao Malfakassa. Samples were grouped by morphospecies and measurements of parts of the body (length/width of head, mandible, pronotum, gula and hind tibia) were done. Four Amitermes species were identified: Amitermes evuncifer, A. guineensis, A. spinifer and A. truncatidens. Among the four species, A. guineensis had the longest head (1,225±0,031mm) while Amitermes spinifer had the shortest (0,933±0,018mm) one.

Under field conditions, the natural enemies’ effectiveness in controlling pests is largely corre-lated with their capability to spread towards infested crops. We previously reported that Aphytis melinus (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a parasitoid of California red scale Aonidiella aurantii (Maskell) (Hemiptera: Diaspididae), was attracted to volatiles from citrus fruit infested with A. aurantii and that d-limonene and β-ocimene A. aurantii -induced plant volatiles were responsible for this attraction. In this study, d-limonene and β-ocimene were examined for their attractive-ness to A. aurantii parasitoid Aphytis melinus in the field after augmentative releases. Both were mixed with paraffin oil for slow release in field experiments to control the population density of A. aurantii by enhancing their natural enemies. The experiment was conducted in 2018 at Mur-doch citrus orchard. A total of 10,000 A. melinus adults were released in different spots of the cit-rus orchard. The spread of the parasitoid was evaluated, for three months after the release, using yellow sticky traps activated with both of d-limonene and β-ocimene and by monitoring the percentage parasitism of the scale on citrus fruit. Field experiments demonstrated that lures baited with isolates of d-limonene and/or β-ocimene, which significantly attracted some species of natural enemies but had no significant impact on other recruitments. The number of A. meli-nus captured during the whole trial was greater in the traps treated with volatiles than the con-trol. Finally, we determined that overall parasitism rates were not increased by synthetic HIPV lures but found evidence that lures may increase parasitism of A. aurantii when there is a de-crease in the amount of volatile organic compounds due to lack of healthy and infested fruit.

Soil termiticide treatment is a fundamental method to control termite population and infestation by creating a continuous barrier surrounding the structures. However, termiticides may dissipate, depending on a half-life, a degradation rate, a leaching activity and a storage method. In this study, the degradation rate and half-life of three commercially available termiticides, with active ingredient of bifenthrin, fipronil and imidacloprid were determined under the field and laboratory conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the bioavailability of termiticides towards subterranean termites (Coptotermes gestroi) termiticides containing active ingredients of fipronil, bifenthrin and imidacloprid under the laboratory conditions at two different temperature 30oC and 40oC using two types of soils i.e. sandy loam and loamy sand no-choice bioassay was done to determine the mortality rate for each termiticide tested. Types of termiticides showed a significant difference toward termite mortality (F= 82.744; df= 2; P= 0.00). Bifenthrin revealed a higher termite mortality compared to fipronil and imidacloprid. Thus, the bifenthrin LT50 and LT95 values were lower compared to fipronil and imidacloprid. Termiticide concentration did affect the termite mortality (F= 9.407; df= 2; P= 0.00) where the higher the concentration, the higher the termite mortality. The laboratory study on termiticide degradation indicated that bifenthrin was more persistent in the soils compared to fipronil and imidacloprid.

Mosquito species are considered important vectors of many diseases in humans, companion animals, and livestock. There is a great need to understand their dynamics and to develop methods for predicting their abundances. However, the population dynamics of mosquitoes are often complex displaying non-linear dynamics and thus, making it difficult to be modeled using linear statistical approaches. In this project, we explored the seasonal population patterns of mosquito populations in a Mediterranean environment in Northern Greece using straightforward machine learning techniques such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). To train, validate and test the network model we have used 2 years weekly counts of adult mosquito data including Culex sp., a major vector of the West Nile virus and related encephalitis diseases. The model training was performed in an open-loop (i.e., parallel series network architecture), including the validation and testing step and later on, after training, it was transformed to a closed-loop for the needs of a multistep-ahead mosquito abundance prediction. Determined by the autocorrelation function, one of the final models is using as inputs one week lagged values of mosquito abundances and was able to capture the adult seasonal mosquito patterns in most cases at acceptable levels. We conclude that ANNs suggest an important candidate for modeling and predicting the seasonal abundance of mosquito data since it is suitable for modeling noisy and incomplete ecological data, with no specific assumptions to be made about the underlying relationships and which are solely determined through data mining. However, we are also looking forward to improving the particular model performance using new data sets since it is of fundamental importance to choose an appropriate training set size and to provide representative coverage of all possible conditions to capture accurately the patterns of ecological time series. Nevertheless, despite the limitations of the current study, this work contributes to knowledge of the seasonal functioning of arthropod vector dynamics and contributes towards the development of decision tools to be used in the preventive management of the transmission cycle of vector-borne diseases.

The transformation of natural environments into urban areas has been on the rise since the industrial revolution in the late 1800s. Currently, urbanization is a global phenomenon intended to accommodate the natural growth of the human population as well as to the increasing levels of migration from rural to urban areas. Urbanization processes are responsible for levels of biodiversity loss never seen since the dawn of human civilization. In this context, the few species that can exploit the resources available in urban areas can greatly benefit and proliferate in those areas mainly by the virtual absence of natural predators and the overabundance of resources as a result of the biotic homogenization process. These few species that are able to thrive in urban environments alongside humans are commonly known as urban exploiters. Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus are among those few species that can thrive in urban environments and, as a consequence, have considerably expanded not only their range but also their abundance in many cities of the world. They are currently present in most large cities in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. This represents a considerable public health challenge since Ae. aegypti and Cx. quinquefasciatus are some of the most epidemiologically relevant mosquito species. Aedes aegypti is a primary vector of chikungunya, dengue, yellow fever, and Zika viruses, whereas Cx. quinquefasciatus is a primary vector of West Nile, Eastern Equine encephalitis, and Saint Louis Encephalitis viruses. New mosquito surveillance and control strategies are needed to deal with this increasing threat of arboviruses outbreaks in urban areas.

Based on the results of entomological studies in thirteen natural and anthropogenic disturbed ecosystems of the Khibiny polar mountains in 2014-2018, a Database on ants was created. The Database contains information on 18 collected ant species and three non-captured species known in Khibiny from reports of the first Scientific Mountain Base in the 1930s. A total of 21 species make up 82% of known myrmecofauna of the Kola Subarctic. The collected ants belong to 4 genera and 2 subfamilies of the family Formicidae, including 13 species of the subfamily Formicinae and 5 species of the subfamily Myrmicinae. Seven Formica species we are reporting in Khibiny for the first time (F.aquilonia, F. forsslundi, F. polyctena, F. rufibarbis, F. sanguinea, F. suecica and F. truncorum). Among them, the boreo-alpine ant F. suecica is rare in Fennoscandia and is a red-listed species in Finland. Three wood ants (F. aquilonia, F. lugubris and F. polyctena) are included in European Red List (1992) in the vulnerable category and in IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (1996) as near-threatened species.

Aphids are one of the main pests of alfalfa in Spain. The relationship between aphids and ladybeetles has been determined. Alfalfa was sampled by sweep-netting along its productive period in several commercial stands each year between 2010-2020. Acyrthosiphum pisum and Therioaphis trifolii were the most abundant aphid species, peaking in the 2^nd and 4^th intercut, respectively. Coccinella septempunctata and Hippodamia variegata were by far the coccinelid prevalent species. There were positive correlations between the abundance of C. septempunctata and A. pisum at the 2^nd intercut; H. variegata and T. trifolii at the 4^th intercut; and H. variegata and the total number of aphids in the 5^th intercut.

Mosquitoes are the vectors of numerous deadly diseases including Yellow Fever, Malaria, Dengue fever, Zika and Chikungunya. Numerous control measures are being implemented around the world to suppress this notorious insect. Mosquito systematics is essential to study the mosquito prevalence in a definite area, which helps entomologists to design and implement specific control measures for prevalent species. Traditional systematics methods are laborious and time-consuming, which can be overcome by different image-processing based machine-learning (ML) approaches. But due to small size and poor-quality images, ML approaches often fail to identify mosquitoes from images. Recently, wing beating sounds showed potential to be used as a classifier in mosquito systematics. The current study aims to develop an ML model to identify different genera and species of mosquitoes, based on wing-beating sounds and propose a computationally inexpensive and fast tool to be used in mosquito control programmes. Wing beating sounds of six mosquito species of three different genera were collected from publicly available sources, and several state-of-art ML models were implemented on raw sounds as well as in processed spectrograms. On raw sounds, the general neural network model with 3 dense layers perceptrons reached at 59% accuracy, whereas for processed spectrograms, Resnet-18 enhance the accuracy to 86.1%. The model also showed potential to enhance the accuracy for the identification of different mosquitoes' sexes. Our model has implications to be served as a mosquito prevalence monitoring tool and assist mosquito eradication program for specific mosquito genera, and finally will help medical practitioners to work on related pathogens.