Notes on Occurrence of Typhlodromus and Phytoseius spp. in Southern British Columbia (Acarina: Phytoseiinae)

Abstract

Phytoseiid mites are of cosmopolitan interest because they are predacious on many phytophagous mites (Tetranychidae, Eriophyidae, and Tarsonemidae) that are pests of agricultural crops. They have been studied in orchards (Collyer, 1953, 1956; Lord, 1949), vineyards (Mathys, 1955), citrus groves (Fleschner and Ricker, 1954; Muma, 1955), and strawberry plantings (Huffaker and Kennett, 1953, 1956), but few workers have recorded their presence in native environments. In the commercial fruit-growing areas of British Columbia, orchards are often planted near uncultivated areas of bush or grassland. The study on which these notes are based was undertaken to determine whether the phytoseiids that occur in these native sites become established in the orchards, and to obtain a knowledge of the entire phytoseiid fauna of the area, a necessary prerequisite to ecological studies of predacious mites in orchards.