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Consumption of cereal leaf beetle, Oulema melanopus, by generalist predators in wheat fields detected by molecular analysis

The cereal leaf beetle (CLB), Oulema melanopus L. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), is a major pest of cereal crops that has recently been reported in western Canada. We developed a set of primers to detect CLB DNA in the gut of six common predator taxa in wheat fields: lady beetles (20 positives of 143 individuals), nabid bugs (73 positives of 206 individuals), and wolf spiders (2 positives of 25 individuals). Nabis americoferus Carayon (Hemiptera: Nabidae) and Coccinella septempunctata L. (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) were the most abundant predators in cereal fields, with 0.35 and 0.05 proportion of samples positive for CLB DNA, respectively. The prey DNA half‐lives were used to adjust the estimates for N. americoferus to 0.22, due to its longer DNA detectability relative to C. septempunctata. Overall, Hippodamia parenthesis (Say) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) had the highest proportion of positives at 0.43. There was a positive association between CLB abundance and proportion of N. americoferus and C. septempunctata positives for CLB DNA. This study highlights the contribution of generalist predators to CLB mortality and their important role in integrated management for CLB. Furthermore, we provide a molecular tool that can be used to identify predators of CLB and predation frequency in agricultural fields.