Some Aspects of Insect Parasites And Predators

Abstract

This article is intended to be interesting rather than of practical utility. Every farmer knows of the enormous value of entomophagous (i.e., feeding on insects) insects and that, without them, the plant-feeding insects would increase so rapidly that within a very few years nearly all crops and indeed most other vegetation would disappear from the surface of this planet. But probably few realize the diversity of the methods of attack that have been evolved by insects against other species of their order. For it may be remarked in passing that insects, in common with all other animals except Homo sapiens, never wage war against their own species. They may occasionally turn cannibals under the stress of famine, and sometimes they kill each other under the dictates of sex, but it is only the Lord of Creation who indulges in organized destruction of his own kind.