Prey–predator interactions: a vital aspect of an effective biological control system

Abstract

This chapter discusses the features of insect natural enemies foraging patterns in the closest sense that we even include a few incidents involving arthropods that are not insects. The majority of insect natural enemies usually need to recognize the habitat that might contain potential victims. It is necessary to find the victims themselves within that ecosystem. The predator or parasitoid needs to select its victim after locating a patch containing potential prey. A female parasitoid must also choose whether to oviposit, eat off the host, or do both while determining the quality of the host. In the circumstance that she chooses to oviposit, concerns about offspring quantity and distribution of sexes, etc. In this chapter, we define and investigate a series of topics, including the predatory response (functional and numerical response), habitat preference, prey resource switching and mutual interference, and patch time allocation. Each of these pursuits leads to predatory behavior of the predators.