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Yeast vis-à-vis Chemical Ecology of Green Lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae)

Green lacewings (Chrysopidae ; ~1200 species), especially Chrysopa and Chrysoperla species whose larvae are predators of aphids and other small soft-bodied pests, are the most agriculturally important family in the order Neuroptera (Aldrich and Zhang 2016). Adults of Chrysopa are also predacious, with robust and asymmetrical mandibles modified for chewing, and are the only lacewings known to produce aggregation pheromones. Recent evidence suggests that Chrysopa adult males must feed on aphid oviparae and/or certain plants to produce their pheromones (Aldrich et al. 2016). However, in non-carnivorous green lacewings such as Chrysoperla, the adult mandibles are symmetrical and relatively poorly developed, whereas their tracheae are much larger than in Chrysopa, an adaptation supporting intestinal symbiotic yeasts (Gibson and Hunter 2005) ; Chrysopa species do not harbor yeast in the crop (Albuquerque et al. 2012). The University of California at Davis is home to one of the largest yeast collections in the world ; the Phaff Yeast Culture Collection, with ~800 species and 6, 000 yeast strains. One of us (EV), while screening yeasts for attraction of the olive fruit fly, incidentally discovered that certain yeasts are significantly attractive to green lacewings. The current research to be described is focused on the field-testing and volatile chemical results of the lacewing-attractive yeasts from the UC Davis Yeast Culture Collection.

Chemical ecology, green lacewings, yeasts

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