Biodiversity of Edible Caterpillars of Imbrasia and Host Plants in Boukoko (Central African Republic)

In Central African Republic, edible caterpillars of Imbrasia gender are income of rural populations, present an opportunity to improve food security and belonging to the category of Non-wood forest products. The goal of this study is to document the ecology of caterpillars of genre Imbrasia in relation to its host plants in Boukoko. The questionnaire was addressed to the actors of the collection and consumption of caterpillars in this Commune, to their local knowledge concerning this food resource as well as the plants of their locality on which caterpillars are collected. The survey took place in September to October 2022 and as a general rule, the 120 respondents were elderly people whose age range varied from 35 to 70 years old. Plant samples are collected in their natural environment. Based on local names;herbaria are mounted, plants photographed and samples collected. The types of edible caterpillars have been inventoried in the field in collaboration with the local populations who consume them. Based on local names, the caterpillars are captured manually from morphological traits and then stored in bottles containing 70% ethanol. The specimens were identified. The data was entered into the Excel spreadsheet which also made it possible to produce histograms with the frequencies of the plant species most valued by the different caterpillars. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was then performed using R software to highlight the correlation between caterpillars and host plants. The main economic importance trees hosting edible caterpillars of Imbrasia gender in Boukoko region are: Entandrophragma cylindricum, Pentaclethra macrophylla, Maesopsis eminii, Albizia ferruginea, Macaranga spinosa, Amphimas ferrugineus, Pentaclethra macrophylla, Racosperma auriculiforme, Eribroma oblonga. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) carried out to assess the variability between the different species of caterpillars according to their host plants shows that the first two axes F1 and F2 explain 27.34% of the overall variability. The different variables along the two factorial axes are weakly correlated. The caterpillar species Imbrasia truncata, Imbrasia epimethea, Imbrasia obscura, Imbrasia petiveri, Imbrasia forda and Imbrasia alopia have more host plant diversity than the caterpillar species: Imbrasia melanops, Imbrasia eblis, Imbrasia anthina, Imbrasia wahlbergii and Imbrasia oyemensis.

Effects of insect-resistant transgenic cotton on ground-dwelling beetle assemblages(Coleoptera)

We compared the ground-dwelling beetle assemblages under four scenarios in which transgenic Bt（Cry 1Ac） cotton（33B）,transgenic Bt（Cry 1Ac）＋CpTI cotton（SGK321）,conventional cotton（33）,conventional cotton（Shiyuan 321） in North China.During the survey in two years（2009-2010）,24 ground beetle species were captured with pitfall traps in 20 plots which included five replicates for each cotton type.No significant difference was observed in the number of ground beetle species captured,activity density,evenness and Shannon-Wiener diversity among the four cotton varieties.Chlaenius posticalis was less abundant in transgenic Bt＋CpTI cotton（SGK321） fields than its conventional cotton（Shiyuan 321）,but more abundant in transgenic Bt cotton（33B） fields compared with its conventional cotton（33）.There was no significant difference for other abundant species between in transgenic cotton and in conventional cotton fields.Based on non-metric multidimensional scaling（NMDS） analysis,ground-dwelling beetle assemblages were similar in transgenic and conventional cotton over the two years,but the ground-dwelling beetle assemblages in transgenic cotton 33 B significantly differed from that in the conventional cotton（strain 33） in 2010.No strong evidence that the transgenic cotton effect on ground-dwelling beetle assemblages was found in this study.