Diversity and taxonomic keys of potato insect pests and their natural enemies in Brgy. Balili, La Trinidad, Benguet

• Main Author: Arce, Shad Natthew S.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Insect pests > Philippines > La Trinidad (Benguet); Potatoes; Biological pest control agents > Philippines > La Trinidad (Benguet); Biology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_bio/24; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdm_bio/article/1025/viewcontent/2023_Arce_Diversity_and_taxonomic_keys_of_potato_insect_pests_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

The diversity and abundance of the arthropod fauna in a pesticide-free farmers’ field potato agroecosystems in Barangay Balili, La Trinidad, Benguet was surveyed between August 16, 2019 to October 1, 2019 using four sampling techniques, namely, beating trays, sweep nets, light trapping and pitfall trapping. A total of 3,250 individual arthropods belonging to 63 species distributed across 12 orders and 36 families were collected during the survey. Insect pests constituted 27 species with 1537 individuals (47.30% relative density), while, the natural enemies comprised 36 species with 1713 individuals (52.70% RD). Diversity indices (SID and H1) show high diversity for both insect pests (SID=0.86; H’ = 2.47; E = 0.75; ED=0.26) and natural enemies (SID=0.94; H’=3.18; E=0.88; ED=0.49) with the biological control agents demonstrating highest diversity and evenness. These high diversity values suggest a strong biological performance of the existing natural enemies in the potato field and support the viability of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as a crop protection method. A checklist for both pests and natural enemies were constructed. Key insect pests were identified to be the foxglove aphid, Aulacorthum solani (Kaltenbach), mirid bug, Moissonia punctata (Fieber), big-headed ant, Pheidole sp., flea beetle Psylliodes napi (Fabricius), and green peach aphid, Myzus persicae (Kaltenbach). Key natural enemies were identified to be the earwig, Labidura sp., dance fly, Elaphropeza sp., wolf spider, Pardosa cf. birmanica (Simon), predatory mirid bug, Deraeocoris sp. 1, and tomato bug, Nesidiocoris tenuis (Reuter). To ensure quick identification of potato arthropods, dichotomous and lucid keys were provided for identified adults of insect pests and natural enemies. A separate key for the identification of the coccinellid larvae of Epilachna vigintioctopunctata (Boisduval) and the lepidopteran larvae of armyworm, Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnagel); tomato fruitworm, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner); cutworm, Spodoptera litura (Fabricius) and the semilooper, Trichoplusia ni (Hubner) was also provided. Photographs of the identified pests and natural enemies were compiled to also provide ease in quick identification. Keywords: Potato, Pests, Natural Enemies, Arthropod Diversity, Dichotomous key, Lucid key, Organic agriculture