Suchergebnisse

Maintaining biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services is an objective of the European Union, implemented through agri-environmental programmes. Biodiversity decline is occurring at a worldwide scale and has twofold implications. From a conservation point of view, the number of extinct and endangered species increases, and this impoverishment of natural ecosystems reduces their resilience. From an agronomical point of view, reduction of biodiversity affects processes that hamper crop productivity, such as pollination or pest management, being the consequence of this biodiversity decline a reduction in agroecosystem sustainability. But both, ecosystem resilience and agro ecosystem sustainability are not isolated. In the case of pest control, in many cases it is assumed that it depends on biodiversity. However, a positive relationship between biodiversity of natural enemies and pest suppression is not always the case. In fact, in some cases this relationship does not occur (Fig.1), and the success of biological control depends not on biodiversity, but on the presence of one or only few species of natural enemies. As an example, in the case of olive trees, a single species such as Anthocoris nemoralis or relatively simple predator assemblagesare associated with better biological control than complex assemblages (Paredes et al., 2015). However, it seems that the general rule in different agroecosystems is that biodiversity rather than abundance of natural enemies is linked to pest control, although this has been proven mainly in annual crops and in non-mediterranean environmental conditions (Dainese et al., 2019).

X. fastidiosa is one of the most destructive pathogens of olive orchards. Its recent arrival to Europe can cause important losses, with possible drastic consequences for the sector. Philaenus spumarius (Linnaeus 1758) was identified as vector of X. fastidiosa in Europe and finding candidate natural enemies of P. spumarius is essential to design environmentally friendly control strategies against X. fastidiosa. Generalist predators, such as spiders, arise as important potential biocontrol agents. In this context, a set of species-specific primers for detecting the presence of P. spumarius DNA in the gut of predatory arthropods is being developed. All primers will be tested for checking cross-reactive amplification of arthropods DNA and evaluated in heterospecific mixes of nucleic acids. Subsequent feeding trials will be conducted using Synemaglobosum (Fabricius 1775), an important spider species in olive groves from Mirandela, Portugal. These trials will allow determining the detection efficiency of the primers designed and also they will be the starting point to detect predation in field trials. These primers therefore provide a very useful tool for screening the gut contents of potential predators of P. spumarius, and can thus reveal candidate species for this species biological control. ; This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 727987 "Xylella fastidiosa Active Containment Through a multidisciplinary-Oriented Research Strategy XF-ACTORS". ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion