Disentangling omnivory of heteropteran and coccinellid predators present in peach and alfalfa crops by metabarcoding analysis

Abstract

Ecosystems management is essential for the biological control of arthropod pests in agriculture. For this, it is necessary to know which arthropod and plant resources are the most used by the generalist predators present in the studied agroecosystem. Molecular approaches, like high-throughput sequencing (HTS) are nowadays a key tool to disentangle the resources consumed by each predator species. In this study we use a multi-primer metabarcoding approach with pooled samples to screen the most common trophic interactions of four heteropteran and four coccinellid species. They were the most common when they were collected in a peach and in an adjacent alfalfa crop at different dates in two consecutive years. The HTS analysis of 433 heteropteran and coccinellid predators showed that they ingested 27 arthropod taxa, including a potential pest of peach not cited until now, and 14 plant taxa. Detection of some ingested arthropod taxa and plant DNA showed that those predator species foraged on non-crop plants, which play a role in attracting or maintaining these predators close or in the crops. This metabarcoding approach also showed the omnivory of those heteropteran and coccinellid species, important information to improve biological control programs.