Annotated list of soldier flies (Diptera, Stratiomyidae) of the Crimean Peninsula is presented. It comprises 42 species from 14 genera of 6 subfamilies. Nine species are recorded for the first time in the Crimea. The fauna of Stratiomyidae of the Crimean Peninsula is compared with the faunas of countries situated around the Black Sea (Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey).
Natural geographic range of the predatory bug Orius laevigatus which is widely used for biological control of various insect pests in greenhouses includes Western, Central, and Southern Europe, Mediterranean, Northern Africa, and South Asia. In the former USSR it was recorded in the southern Ukraine, Crimea, Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. In 2020 we found O. laevigatus in a sunflower field in Stavropol Territory of Russia. To estimate the biocontrol potential of the Stavropol population, the process of its adaptation to mass rearing conditions was investigated over 17 sequential generations. The experiments have shown that individuals of the Stavropol population did not differ significantly in several important parameters of reproduction and development (female fecundity, survival of preimaginal stages, etc.) under the mass rearing conditions from individuals of the laboratory population reared at these conditions over many tens of generations. These results suggest that the Stavropol population of O. laevigatus originates from bugs sporadically escaped from local greenhouses and mass rearing facilities rather than represents the result of the natural spread from the Black Sea coast caused by global warming.
The biography, scientific and pedagogical careers of a well-known entomologist Anatoly Mikhailovich Lobanov are briefly described. List of his publications and a set of photographs in different periods of his life are given.
Cisurgus ferulae Pfeffer, 1983 is recorded for the first time in Northern and Southern Kazakhstan. Original photographs of adult external structures, male genitalia, spermatheca, biotopes, and host plants are provided as well as an amended description of the species.
Although the potential of the use of the semiochemicals (pheromones, allomones, kairomones, and synomones) and the semiophysicals (physical stimuli) to control insect behaviour for plant protection from harmful insects is beyond doubt, the characteristics of the interactions between their attractive properties have been extremely poorly studied. Therefore, despite the fact that the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, is one of the most harmful insects on the planet, there is no information in the literature on the effect of a combination of light stimuli and a synthetic sex attractant (SSA) on the behaviour of this species. In July–August 2021–2023, we conducted a study in two locations in Krasnodar Territory of Russia to test attraction of cotton bollworm adults with traps placed on corn sowings and equipped with four baits: (1) ultraviolet light emitting diodes (UV LEDs), (2) SSA, (3) SSA + UV LEDs, and control (4). The results obtained showed significant differences between the baits in capturing moths: not a single adult was captured in the control trap at all; traps with UV LEDs captured about 8%; with SSA, capturing a little more than 30%, and traps that attracted insects with both SPA and UV LEDs captured almost 60% of the total number of moths captured. The small catch of moths to the light is clearly explained by the situation of the traps in rows of tall hybrid corn at a height of 1.5 metres above the ground and no closer than 30 metеrs to the edge of the field. This means that the light, unlike SSA signals, was faded rapidly by the surrounding vegetation. However, a positive aspect of the technique used is the absence of significant numbers of non-target insect species capture in traps. The only exceptions are green grasshoppers, Tettigonia caudata (Ch.) and T. viridissima (L.), in traps with LEDs or other baits. Using two-factor ANOVA of both the original and transformed (x + 0.5)½ capture data, we found a synergy effect in the interaction of SSA and LED signals with respect to attractiveness for pest adults at pa = 0.05 only in one out of the five tests conducted. This result shows that the interaction of the semiochemicals and semiophysicals has rather additive than synergistic nature. Nevertheless, the results of the tests suggest that the combined use of SSA and LED may be a promising means for controlling the behaviour of the pest since retrofitting pheromone traps with UV LEDs can result in an approximately twofold increase in catch rates of the cotton bollworm adults.
