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Zoophytophagous predators provide benefits in agroecosystems when feeding on pests, but they can also cause crop damage. Optimizing the use of zoophytophagous predators as biocontrol agents would require improving pest control and/or limiting damage. Populations of a zoophytophagous species can be composed of a mix of individuals diverging in their level of diet specialization. Consequently, depending on their level of zoophagy, individuals would vary widely in the benefits and risks they provide to pest management. We tested the hypothesis that manipulating the composition of the population of a zoophytophagous insect, the mullein bug, Campylomma verbasci (Hemiptera: Miridae), towards an increased zoophagy would increase their net benefit in an apple orchard. We compared the inherent benefits and risks of two different isogroup lines of mullein bug that genetically differed in their level of zoophagy. In spring, when damage occurs, both strains infrequently punctured apple fruit, which rarely lead to damage and therefore represented a low risk. During summer, only the highly-zoophagous line impacted the spider mite population, while the lowly-zoophagous line did not differ from the control treatments. We concluded that manipulating the composition of the zoophytophagous predator population provided extra net benefits that improved pest control.

Zoophytophagous insects can substitute animals for plant resources when prey is scarce. Many arthropods feed on conspecifics to survive in these conditions. An individual’s tendency for cannibalism may depend on its genotype along with its diet specialization, in interaction with the availability of alternative food resources. We compared two isogroup lines of the zoophytophagous mullein bug, either specialized on animal or on plant diets, that were generated to improve biocontrol. We predicted that: (1) bugs from the prey-specialized line would show higher levels of cannibalism than bugs from the pollen-specialized line, and (2) both lines would decrease cannibalism levels in the presence of their preferred resource. Under laboratory conditions, large nymphal instars had 24 hours to feed on smaller instars, in the absence of additional resources, or with either spider mites or pollen present. Cannibalism was reduced by the availability of both prey and pollen, although prey had a lower effect than pollen. The intensity of cannibalism was always higher in the prey-specialized line than in the pollen-specialized line, regardless of the availability of supplemented resources. The pollen-specialized line had decreased cannibalism levels only when pollen was available. These results indicate that cannibalism is a potentially regulating force in the prey-specialized line, but not in the pollen-specialized line.