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In Europe, the box tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis (Walker, 1859) was first reported in 2006, in southwestern Germany, then spread to almost all countries. Larvae of this species affect the aesthetic value of the box tree. In the last period, numerous studies were carried out regarding the identification of useful entomofauna that reduce the numerical density of the population of Cydalima perspectalis. In this study conducted in north-western Romania (Cluj County, in 2019), entomopathogens and useful entomofauna were monitored in four areas, represented by four cities. The entomopathogenic agents contaminated the larvae of the box tree moth in a proportion of 5.6% at Gherla, 6.8% at Dej, 8.7% at Cluj-Napoca and 15.3% at Ciucea. Most larvae have been infected with Bacillus. At Cluj-Napoca and Ciucea, the presence of the larval endoparasite Exorista larvarum L. (Diptera: Tachinidae) was reported. Parasitoid species determined a parasitization rate of 5.1% at Dej, 8.6% at Gherla and 13.4% at Cluj-Napoca. Predators affected pupae in a proportion of 3.8% at Gherla, 4.2% at Dej and 16% at Cluj-Napoca. Among the pupae predators, for the first-time common earwig was reported, Forficula auricularia L. Entomopathogenic agents affected 5.3% of the pupae collected from Cluj-Napoca, 7.7% in Gherla and 12.5% in Dej. During the monitoring period of the zoophagous entomofauna and the entomopathogenic microorganisms, affected the pupae in a percentage of 20.1% in Gherla, 21.8% in Dej, 34.7% in Cluj-Napoca, contributing to the diminution of the population of the harmful species.

Aim We explore the impact of demography and biogeographic history on the interpretation of ecological niche model, highlighting the potential for integrating genetic and ecological approaches to elucidate the evolutionary dynamics underlying the geographic distributions of cryptic species. Location Western Palaearctic (Africa and Europe). Methods We conducted intensive sampling across the Iberian Peninsula to obtain mtDNA phylogeographic data and to develop fine‐scale ecological niche models, projecting these models into both past and future scenarios for the cryptic earwigs Forficula dentata and F. mediterranea. Additionally, we utilised Bayesian skyline plot (BSP) analyses to reconstruct demographic histories and infer past population trends for both species. Results The phylogeographic patterns revealed divergent evolutionary histories: F. dentata exhibited a well‐established, geographically structured lineage, whereas F. mediterranea displayed a star‐shaped pattern characteristic of recent expansion. Comparison between current climate models and those projected into the past and future indicate that F. dentata is likely facing a substantial reduction in its suitable habitat due to ongoing climate change, possibly exacerbated by increasing competition with F. mediterranea. Main Conclusions Our results suggest that climatic factors alone cannot determine the distribution of cryptic species. Historical and demographic factors play a crucial role in shaping their current geographical structure. In addition, human‐mediated dispersal and ongoing climate change may contribute to the genetic and spatial structure within the F. auricularia species complex. Overall, exploring the intricate interplay between historic, genetic and geographic distribution is recommended to overcome contradictory predictions of climate models.

The recent development of human societies has led to major, rapid, and often inexorable changes in the environment of most animal species. Over the last decades, a growing number of studies formulated predictions on the modalities of animal adaptation to novel or changing environments, questioning how and at what speed animals should adapt to such changes, discussing the levels of risks imposed by changes in the mean and/or variance of temperatures on animal performance, and exploring the underlying roles of phenotypic plasticity and genetic inheritance. These fundamental predictions, however, remain poorly tested using field data. Here, we tested these predictions using a unique continental-scale data set in the European earwig Forficula auricularia L., a univoltine insect introduced in North America one century ago. We conducted a common garden experiment, in which we measured 13 life-history traits in 4,158 field-sampled earwigs originating from 19 populations across North America. Our results first demonstrate that 10 of the 13 measured life-history traits are associated with two sets of variations in seasonal temperatures, that is, winter–summer and autumn–spring. We found, however, no association with the overall mean monthly temperatures of the invaded locations. Furthermore, our use of a common garden setup reveals that the observed patterns of variation in earwigs’ life-history traits are not mere plastic responses to their current environment, but are either due to their genetic background and/or to the environmental conditions they experienced during early life development. Overall, these findings provide continent-scale support to the claims that adaptation to thermal changes can occur quickly (in less than 100 generations), even in insects with long life cycles, and emphasize the importance of variation in seasonal temperature over mean population temperatures in climate adaptation.

The European earwig Forficula auricularia is an important model for studies of maternal care, sexual selection, sociality, and host–parasite interactions. However, detailed genetic investigations of this species are hindered by a lack of genomic resources. Here, we present a high-quality hybrid genome assembly for Forficula auricularia using Nanopore long-reads and 10× linked-reads. The final assembly is 1.06 Gb in length with 31.03% GC content. It consists of 919 scaffolds with an N50 of 12.55 Mb. Half of the genome is present in only 20 scaffolds. Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs scores are ∼90% from 3 sets of single-copy orthologs (eukaryotic, insect, and arthropod). The total repeat elements in the genome are 64.62%. The MAKER2 pipeline annotated 12,876 protein-coding genes and 21,031 mRNAs. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the assembled genome as that of species B, one of the 2 known genetic subspecies of Forficula auricularia. The genome assembly, annotation, and associated resources will be of high value to a large and diverse group of researchers working on dermapterans.

Conservation biological control in agriculture primarily relies on avoiding pesticides that may harm key natural enemies. In temperate tree fruit crops, the European earwig, Forficula auricularia (L.) has only recently become appreciated as an important predator of economic pests, particularly woolly aphids and pear psylla. Therefore, the non-target effects of orchard pesticides on earwigs are largely understudied. This is particularly true for herbicides, which earwigs are likely to be exposed to due to their foraging behavior moving between the canopy and the ground cover. We tested residues of formulated pesticides (8 insecticides and 7 herbicides) commonly used in tree fruit crops for lethal and sublethal (movement, predation rate) effects on adult female earwigs.Two herbicides, paraquat and glufosinate, and one insecticide, spinetoram, were acutely toxic to earwigs within 72 h. No tested pesticides altered earwigs' movement or resting behavior compared to the control.The insecticides spinosad and cyantraniliprole and the herbicides 2,4-D, glufosinate, halosulfuron, rimsulfuron, and oxyfluorfen reduced earwig predation on green peach aphids. Therefore, these pesticides may reduce earwig predation on pests in orchards. Our results suggest that some pesticides are of greater risk, and thus, should be carefully considered or better timed when used in tree fruit orchards where earwigs are considered for conservation or augmentative biological control.

Sublethal exposure to pesticides can alter the survival and reproduction of a wide range of non-target organisms. However, it remains unclear whether this exposure can alter behaviours that are often essential for long-term population dynamics and maintenance, such as parental care. In this study, we tested the effect of pyriproxyfen exposure (an insect growth regulator) on maternal care in the European earwig, an insect that is both used in pest control in pip-fruit orchards and considered a pest in stone fruit orchards. We exposed 424 females at doses either 10 times lower, equivalent or 10 times higher than normal application rates in French orchards. As maternal care can change over the weeks of family life, we exposed the earwig mothers at five different days before and after egg hatching. We then measured the expression of ten forms of maternal care towards eggs and juveniles, six non-caring behaviours, eggs and juvenile development, metabolic reserves in mothers at egg hatching and females’ production of a terminal clutch. First, our results revealed that the three tested doses of pyriproxyfen were non-lethal and confirmed that maternal care decreased throughout both pre- and post-hatching family life. However, we did not detect any effect of pyriproxyfen on maternal care and non-care behaviours, eggs and juvenile development, quantities of lipids, proteins and glycogen in mothers at egg hatching, and on the production of a future clutch. Overall, these findings suggest that the maximal doses of pyriproxyfen authorized in French orchards is likely to have limited effects on the short- and long-term maintenance of populations of the European earwig and raises fundamental questions about the nature of the link between juvenile hormone and parental care in insects.

A lack of parental care is generally assumed to entail substantial fitness costs for offspring that ultimately select for the maintenance of family life across generations. However, it is unknown whether these costs arise when parental care is facultative, thus questioning their fundamental importance in the early evolution of family life. Here, we investigated the short-term, long-term and transgenerational effects of maternal loss in the European earwig Forficula auricularia, an insect with facultative post-hatching maternal care. We showed that maternal loss did not influence the developmental time and survival rate of juveniles, but surprisingly yielded adults of larger body and forceps size, two traits associated with fitness benefits. In a cross-breeding/cross-fostering experiment, we then demonstrated that maternal loss impaired the expression of maternal care in adult offspring. Interestingly, the resulting transgenerational costs were not only mediated by the early-life experience of tending mothers, but also by inherited, parent-of-origin-specific effects expressed in juveniles. Orphaned females abandoned their juveniles for longer and fed them less than maternally-tended females, while foster mothers defended juveniles of orphaned females less well than juveniles of maternally-tended females. Overall, these findings reveal the key importance of transgenerational effects in the early evolution of family life.

Offspring of species with facultative family life are able to live with and without parents (i.e. to adjust to extreme changes in their social environment). While these adjustments are well understood on a phenotypic level, their genetic underpinnings remain surprisingly understudied. Investigating gene expression changes in response to parental absence may elucidate the genetic constraints driving evolutionary transitions between solitary and family life. Here, we manipulated maternal presence to observe gene expression changes in the fat body of juvenile European earwigs, an insect with facultative family life. Because parents typically protect offspring against pathogens, expression changeswere recorded in pathogen-free and pathogen-exposed environments. We found that manipulating maternal presence changed the expression of 154 genes, including several metabolism and growth-related genes, and that this change depended on pathogen presence. Specifically, localization and cell transporter genes were downregulated in maternal absence without pathogens but upregulated with pathogens. At least one immunity gene (pathogenesis-related protein 5) was affected by pathogen exposure regardless of maternal presence. Overall, our findings explicate how offspring adjust to parental deprivation on a molecular level and reveal that such adjustments heavily depend on pathogens in the environment. This emphasizes the central role of pathogens in family life evolution.

The use of herbicides on crops often results in unintentional, low-dose exposure of non-target organisms, such as insects. While these exposures are increasingly known to alter the survival and physiology of insects, it remains unclear whether these effects can vary between populations and modify other fitness-related traits, such as behaviour and immunity. Here, we addressed these questions by testing the effects of sublethal exposure to a glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH) on the behaviour and immunity of European earwig males from six natural populations. We exposed each male to a dose of a common GBH (Roundup©) that was either recommended for crops, five times lower than that recommended for crops, or to a control solution. Twenty-four hours later, we measured the activity, boldness, and aggregation of each male. We then exposed them to an entomopathogenic fungus, monitored their survival for 6 weeks, and measured the immune response of the survivors. We found a condition-dependent effect of GBH exposure on male activity. Exposure to low doses induced a positive association between activity and weight, which was not observed in the high-dose and control groups. However, GBH had no effect on any of the other measured traits. All these results were consistent across the six populations tested, although we did find population-specific differences in almost all measurements on males. Further research is now needed to better understand the dose–response to GBH on male activity and its biological impact, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of detoxification processes in this species. Overall, these results emphasise the importance of investigating the effects of herbicides on insects to expand our general understanding of the use and potential risks of plant protection products in integrated pest management programs.

Nature-based solutions, such as biological control, can strongly contribute to reducing the use of plant protection products. In our study, we assessed the effect of augmentative releases of the European earwig (Forficula auricularia) to control the woolly apple aphid (Eriosoma lanigerum), a worldwide pest that causes serious damage to apple trees. The trials were carried out in two organic apple orchards located in Catalonia (NE Spain) from 2017 to 2020. Two treatments were compared: with vs. without earwig release. For the treatment, 30 earwigs per tree were released by means of a corrugated cardboard shelter. These releases were performed once per season and were repeated every year. We periodically assessed the length of the woolly apple aphid colonies, the number of colonies per tree, the percentage of aphids parasitized by Aphelinus mali, and the number of earwigs per shelter. Our results showed that earwig releases reduced the length of the colonies, but this effect was noticeable only for the second year onwards. Moreover, we found that those releases were compatible with A. mali. Overall, we demonstrated the positive impact of earwig releases on the woolly apple aphid control and the importance of considering time on augmentative biological control strategies.