ارزیابی ظرفیت شکارگری جمعیت های مختلف کنه شکارگر Amblyseius swirskii (Acari: Phytoseiidae) روی کنه تارتن دولکه ای

When assessing the efficiency of different populations of predatory mites, it is crucial to evaluate the predation rate in the context of prey-predator interactions for each population and compare them. We compared three populations of the predatory mite Amblyseius swirskii Athias-Henriot including Koppert-old which was obtained from Koppert Biological System and maintained at the laboratory about 10 years, Koppert-new that had been newly purchased from the same company, and Biobest-new that was newly acquired from the Biobest company. The predation rate of the three populations of A. swirskii was determined on the natural prey, Tetranychus urticae Koch (Acari: Tetranychidae), and the predation parameters were calculated accordingly. The highest net predation rate (C0) was 463.96 prey for Koppert-new, while the Biobest-new and Koppert-old populations had values of 213.00 and 221.14 prey, respectively. According to the recorded results, the transformation rate (Qp) for the Koppert-new population was observed to be 27.88, which is significantly higher than the values for the Koppert-old and Biobest-new populations (19.07 and 17.40, respectively). These findings suggested that although the population kept in the laboratory for a long period (Koppert-old) initially appears to have a reduced ability to consume the pest mite population, a closer examination reveals that this population has a higher capacity for converting the consumed prey to new individuals and demonstrates greater reproductive efficiency compared to the Koppert-new population. Therefore, based on the results of this study in terms of predation capacity and previously published results on the demographic parameters, it can be concluded that long-term maintaining of A. swirskii predatory mite populations in the laboratory does not necessarily lead to a decrease in their efficiency.