79| © www.globalsciencepg.org Biolife | 2016 | Vol 4 | Issue 1 B I O L I F E R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E Tachinids as good biocontrol agents of agricultural pests Nilam Shendage 1 and T. V. Sathe 2 * 1 Department of Zoology, Shivaji University, Kolhapur - 416 004, India *Email: profdrtvsathe@rediffmail.com ABSTRACT Tachinids (Diptera: Tachinidae) are good biocontrol agents of agricultural and other crop plants. They are broadly divided into macro egg laying and micro egg laying individuals. Macro egg laying tachinids deposited their eggs directly on the insect pest body while, micro egg laying tachinids laid on the host plants of insect pests. In both cases, after getting the entry into the host body, eggs hatched into maggots and maggots consumed internal tissues of the pest insects by killing them when they came out by breaking the body wall of pest stages like larvae and pupae. Mostly pest larvae have been found attacked by tachinids. The diversity of tachinids and their biocontrol potential is summarized in the paper. KEY WORDS: Tachinids, diversity, biocontrol potential. INTRODUCTION The Tachinids are very potential biocontrol agents of several insect pests. They belong to the family Tachinidae of order Diptera which contain about 10,000 species worldwide (Irwin et al., 2003). The tachinids play significant role in regulating herbivore population and stimulating ecological communities, both natural and managed. Up to date, more than 100 species of tachinids have been employed in biological control programmes of agricultural, horticultural and forest crop plants (Sathe, 2014). Tachinids occur throughout the world from nearly all terrestrial environments. Therefore, tachinids are attracting increasing attention of basic ecologists, taxonomists and the workers involved in biological control of insects. Review of literature indicates that the tachinids have been studied by Allen (1995), Belshaw (1993), Crosskey (1976), Feener and Brown (1997), Felland (1990), Monteith (1955), Roth et al. (1982), Shima (1989), Sathe (2012, 2014), Shendage and Sathe (2014 a, b), Sathe et al. (2014 a, b), etc. Material and Methods Biocontrol potential of tachinids from Kolhapur region of India has been studied by making the survey of tachinid parasitoids on insect pests at weekly interval by collecting immature stages of pests such as larvae and pupae. A very large number of pest larvae and pupae were collected from the fields and reared in the laboratory for screening the tachinids from them. Per cent parasitism was decided on the number of hosts parasitized out of hundred individuals. Different crops and pests have been surveyed for making the records of pests and their parasitoids” by one man one hour search / collection method during the years (2014-2015). The insect pests and the tachinids emerged from the pests have been identified by consulting appropriate literature cited in references. Results Result recorded in table-1 and Fig 1-7 indicated that the tachinids attacked on 20 pest insects from Kolhapur region. The maximum 40.00% and minimum 2.00 % parasitism was recorded on Spodoptera litura Fab and Forficula sp. by macro egg type parasitoids respectively. Both macro egg type and micro egg type of tachinids were prevalent in the Kolhapur region of India (Table-1). In general, macro egg type tachinids were dominant in the region wherein they directly laid their eggs into the body of How to cite this article: Nilam Shendage and T. V. Sathe (2016). Tachinids as good biocontrol agents of agricultural pests. Biolife, 4(1), pp 79-83. DOI :10.17812/blj.2016.4110 Published online: 9 January, 2016 AN INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF BIOLOGY & LIFE SCIENCES 4(1):79-83 ISSN (online): 2320-4257 www.biolifejournal.com