Geographic origin may not influence vine weevil Otiorhynchus sulcatus (Fabricius) susceptibility to the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum (Petch)

ABSTRACT

Otiorhynchus sulcatus, known as the vine weevil, is a polyphagous pest that causes economically important damage to horticultural crops worldwide. The entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum is widely used to control this pest. Little research has investigated variation in susceptibility to this pathogen between vine weevil populations at different locations. This study addresses this knowledge gap by comparing survival rates of larvae from adults collected in two UK areas when treated with M. brunneum. Larvae from these locations did not differ in their susceptibility, suggesting that location per se may not affect the efficacy of M. brunneum against vine weevil larvae.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Biocontrol
• curculionid
• larva
• soil-dwelling pest
• strawberry
• survival regression

Acknowledgments

PMM was funded by the James Hutton Institute and Harper Adams University through a joint PhD studentship. AJK and CM were funded through the strategic research programme funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division and the research was supported by the Underpinning Capacity project ‘Insect Pest Collections’. TP and RB were supported by Harper Adams University. At the James Hutton Institute (Dundee, UK), we thank Dr Jim McNicol (BioSS, Dundee), Dr Katharine Preedy (BioSS, Dundee) and Dr Daniel Leybourne for excellent advice for designing the experiments and analysing the data, and Dr Nikki Jennings and Dr Dorota Jarret for helpful comments on the manuscript. At Warwick University we thank Gill Prince for providing Metarhizium brunneum conidia. We also thank Dr Federica Caradonia, Amanda Tercero Araque, Magdalena Ślachetka and Araceli Torró Galiana for their assistance in collecting vine weevil larvae. We thank Jaume Morera Margarit for contributing with the design of the graphical abstract We also thank the reviewers of this manuscript which have contributed to improve the clarity of our arguments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).