The enemy of my parasite is my friend: the possible role of predatory mites as biological control agents of pest beetles in soil

ABSTRACT

Some authors have suggested that mites in the family Laelapidae could be used as biological control agents of plant-feeding Scarabaeidae, by acting as predators or parasites of their larvae and pupae in soil. This paper proposes an alternative hypothesis, that these mites could actually be part of complex symbioses, and may sometimes be beneficial to the scarab larvae. The argument is based on some known examples of symbioses involving mites and insects, which involve multiple species at several different trophic levels. It is difficult or impossible to anticipate the effect of one species on another in these complex communities without including the many other species with which they interact. Careful study of these relationships will need detailed and accurate taxonomy, which has been lacking in some previous studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Symbiosis
• mutualism
• Laelapidae
• Coleoptera
• biological control

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to my friend and colleague Dave Walter for his thoughtful comments on the manuscript, to Peter Allsopp for sharing his knowledge of scarabs in sugarcane, and to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.