In addition to their active ingredients, pesticides contain also additives - surfactants. Use of surfactants has been increasing over the past decade, but their effects on non-target organisms, especially natural enemies of pests, have been studied only very rarely. The effect of three common agrochemical surfactants on the foraging behavior of the wolf spider Pardosa agrestis was studied in the laboratory. Differences in short-term, long-term, and overall cumulative predatory activities were investigated. We found that surfactant treatment significantly affected short-term predatory activity but had no effect on long-term predatory activity. The surfactants also significantly influenced the cumulative number of killed prey. We also found the sex-specific increase in cumulative kills after surfactants treatment. This is the first study showing that pesticide additives have a sublethal effect that can weaken the predatory activity of a potential biological control agent. More studies on the effects of surfactants are needed to understand how they affect beneficial organisms in agroecosystems.

Department of Forest Ecology Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology Mendel University in Brno Zemědělská 1 613 00 Brno Czech Republic; Department of Botany and Zoology Faculty of Science Masaryk University Brno Kotlářská 2 611 37 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Zoology Fisheries Hydrobiology and Apiculture Faculty of Agronomy Mendel University in Brno Zemědělská 1 613 00 Brno Czech Republic

Citace poskytuje Crossref.org