Assessing the role of biological control agents of cutworms (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in field crops in the Canadian Prairies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cutworms can cause serious damage to crops in the Prairies Ecozone of southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. By far, the best-known biocontrol agents of pest cutworms are parasitoids. However, the community of parasitoids is poorly known, and parasitoids remain as an unutilized resource for controlling cutworms. Thus, this study is designed to identify the economically important cutworms, to characterize the taxonomy and biology of the parasitoid community attacking those cutworm species in relationships to cutworm biology, and to identify and characterize potential plant resources that can enhance pest control services of parasitoids in the Prairies. Cutworms, including redbacked, darksided, dingy, and army cutworms were collected from infested fields and reared in the laboratory conditions during 2012-2016. Hymenopteran parasitoids emerged from cutworms were 64% Encyrtidae, 23% Ichneumonidae, and 13% Braconidae. The percent parasitized by each species was below 10% throughout the study period. Copidosoma bakeri and Copidosoma cuproviridis were the two Encyrtidae species recorded according to their original descriptions, but data obtained from their morphology, morphometry, genetic, collection locality, and host data support did not provide support for two species and new revision for this genus is needed. C. bakeri was the most common parasitoid recorded in the Prairies, and 89.1 % of hymenopteran parasitoids recorded from Manitoba were C. bakeri. Thus, C. bakeri was the only species capable of controlling cutworms in Manitoba. In contrast, both Cotesia spp. and C. bakeri were parasitizing cutworm communities in Alberta. All other hymenopteran parasitoids were recorded in small numbers or recorded only once during the study period. Finally, I assessed potential cover crops that could provide resources to parasitoids with respect to buckwheat, camelina, canola, chickling vetch, field pennycress, flax, oriental mustard, phacelia, and tillage radish and found camelina is the best candidate for cover cropping. This study is the critical first step in developing sustainable management practices for cutworms in canola and will develop the framework for future research on parasitoids and habitat management to develop effective biocontrol strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".