Project properties
Title Ant management in citrus: the good, the bad, and the ugly (in Spain)
Group Entomology, Laboratory of
Project type internship
Credits 24-36
Supervisor(s) IVIA: Dr. Maite Fernández de Bobadilla and Dr. Alejandro Tena
WUR: Dr. Martine Kos
Examiner(s) Prof. dr. M. Dicke
Contact info IVIA: Dr. Maite Fernández de Bobadilla (maria.fernandezdebobadilla@gmail.com)
WUR: Dr. Martine Kos (martine.kos@wur.nl).
Begin date 2024/02/01
End date 2025/12/31
Description Start and end date: from beginning of February 2024 to December 2025. Field work can be done from April to September 2024 and 2025.

Internship at Plant Protection- Entomology at Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVIA) Valencia (Spain)

Up to 40% of the world's agricultural yield is lost due to pests and diseases, representing a loss of more than 240,000 million euros per year. The agricultural sector has heavily relied on chemical control to combat pests. The enormous environmental impact of chemical pest control in conventional agriculture has sparked interest in more sustainable pest management practices. In the context of sustainable agriculture and biological pest control, ants play a crucial role because they are one of the most abundant groups of arthropods in most agroecosystems and have a great impact on the rest of the organisms that compose it. Therefore, ants are a cornerstone that determines the biological control of many agroecosystems.
Ants provide various ecosystem services in agriculture, reducing the abundance of some pest insects, reducing crop damage, and increasing yield. However, in some cases, ants decrease the abundance of other biological control agents and increase the abundance of certain pests. The biology of ant species, pests, and of the biological control agents determine the impact of ants on the pest level in each specific agroecosystem. It is necessary to investigate the global role of ants in agroecosystems to develop management strategies for their populations that enhance their positive effects and limit their negative effects on the harvest.
Citrus trees are the main crop in the Valencian Community and have great economic, landscape, and social value. The Valencian Community is the main citrus exporting region in the world, with 14% of world exports. As in other crops, several species of ants with very different biology coexist in our citrus trees and both positive and negative effects of ants in the biological control of citrus pests have been described.
The goal of this line of research is to develop ant management methods in citrus orchards in order to improve biological pest control. In your MSc thesis you may focus on the following points depending on your interests:
i) To identify and evaluate the role of the different species of ants in Valencian citrus orchards.
ii) To evaluate the effect of ant exclusion on the biological control of pests
iii) To develop and evaluate sustainable ant management strategies.
iv) To assess the effect of flower strips and bunker plants on the interactions between ants, honeydew producers and natural enemies.

Study system: orange trees and the associated community of herbivores and natural enemies. Special focus on the interaction between mealybugs (Delottococcus aberiae, Planococcus citri), ants that tend honeydew producers (Lasius grandis, Pheidole pallidula, Tapinoma sp, Plagiolepis pygmaea), generalist predators and mealybug parasitoids.
Used skills conservation biological control, insect identification, flower strip design, field work, trophic interactions experimental design, ant-mealybugs mutualism, ant management.
Requirements ENT-30806 Fundamental and Applied Aspects of the Biology of Insects. For MBI students the requirement is that they have followed the two courses of their MBI specialization.