Abstract

During the past four decades, several species of aphidophagous Coccinellidae became established in North America, including Coccinella septempunctata, Harmonia axyridis, Hippodamia variegata, and Propylea quatuordecimpunctata. After their establishment, unknown circumstances favoured a rapid increase in population densities and distribution of H. axyridis and C. septempunctata at localities hundreds and thousands of kilometers from their release sites. Propylea quatuordecimpunctata and Hippodamia variegata have spread more slowly after becoming established in northeastern North America. Comparative studies based upon allozyme variation in these four introduced species and in six native North American species of ladybird beetles revealed no significant differences in genetic diversities. Genetic variation, assessed by allelic diversity and heterozygosity, was uncorrelated with the establishment and spread of these predatory species in North America. All ladybirds studied show a remarkable degree of dispersion with little detectable population subdivision.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-15-2005

Notes/Citation Information

Published in European Journal of Entomology v. 102, issue 3.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.14411/eje.2005.067

Funding Information

Research presented in this paper was partially supported by grants from USDA-APHIS and a grant from the USDA-National Research Initiative.

Related Content

This is publication 05-08-052 of the University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station.

Download

Included in

Entomology Commons

Share

COinS