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Making a Pest Beneficial: Fungus Gnats [Bradysia impatiens (Diptera: Sciaridea)] as Potential Vectors of Microbial Control Agents to Suppress Pathogens they Also Spread

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Entomovectoring for Precision Biocontrol and Enhanced Pollination of Crops

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Abstract

The fungus gnats, Bradysia impatiens (larvae and adults), were either separately or concurrently exposed for 6 h to growing spores of Fusarium oxysporum and Pythium aphanidermatum, and a powder formulation of Clonostachys rosea on leaf discs of strawberry to determine their capacity in laboratory trials for vectoring these three microbes. We determined the number of spores for each fungus species that individual larval or adult fungus gnats carried or ingested. We also assessed the capacity of fungus gnats to carry or ingest the three kinds of spores simultaneously, and to evaluate suppression of growth of F. oxysporum and P. aphanidermatum by C. rosea (a known biological control agent against numerous plant pathogens) 14 days after sampling. When the fungus gnats were exposed to single fungus, larvae ingested about 21 times more spores than did adults. The adults carried twice as many spores externally as did the larvae. When the insects were exposed simultaneously to all three kinds of spores both larvae and adults carried externally more or less the same numbers of each kind of spore. However, when both larvae and adults were exposed to all three kinds of spore simultaneously, the larvae had ingested about ten times the number of spores as the adults. When ingested mixtures of spores were cultured, Clonostachys reduced Fusarium and Pythium sporulation only when the spores were ingested by larvae. That result reflects that adults ingested very few spores of the three microbes, probably too few for suppression of Fusarium or Pythium by Chlonostachys to be expressed. Our results indicate that both larval and adult B. impatiens are indeed likely effective vectors of infections of both F. oxysporum and P. aphanidermatum but may be able to be exploited to vector C. rosea alone and simultaneously for potential control of the two pathogens.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the various funding sources for the research done over the years: The Ontario Pesticides Advisory Board, The Government of Alberta, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, The National Research Council of Canada, The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. We also thank the many people that have contributed and help conduct all the research trials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Harrow Research and Development Centre, Harrow, ON, Canada

    Jean-Pierre Kapongo & Les Shipp

  2. School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Peter G. Kevan

  3. Department of Forest Entomology, Insect Ecology Laboratory, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Hisatomo Taki

Authors
  1. Jean-Pierre Kapongo
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  2. Peter G. Kevan
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  3. Les Shipp
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  4. Hisatomo Taki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter G. Kevan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Guy Smagghe

  2. Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, Institute for Apiculture, Celle, Germany

    Otto Boecking

  3. Centro Agricoltura Ambiente “Giorgio Nicoli”, Crevalcore, Bologna, Italy

    Bettina Maccagnani

  4. Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia

    Marika Mänd

  5. School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Peter G. Kevan

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Kapongo, JP., Kevan, P.G., Shipp, L., Taki, H. (2020). Making a Pest Beneficial: Fungus Gnats [Bradysia impatiens (Diptera: Sciaridea)] as Potential Vectors of Microbial Control Agents to Suppress Pathogens they Also Spread. In: Smagghe, G., Boecking, O., Maccagnani, B., Mänd, M., Kevan, P. (eds) Entomovectoring for Precision Biocontrol and Enhanced Pollination of Crops. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18917-4_13

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