Harnessing the Potential of Syrphids: their Role as Bio-agents and Pollinators

Abstract

The agriculture sector has a major contribution to India’s overall economy. However, crop production accounts with numerous constraints because of biotic and abiotic factors. Pest damage and pollination services are two crucial factors among several others. Integrated Pest Management techniques involving the use of natural enemies are now used to combat pests which are safer to pollinators too. Pollination is important in agriculture and is a fundamental pillar of crop production. Effective pollination leads to an increase in crop and seed production along with improvement in its quality. Insect pollinators maintain a diverse range of orchard, agricultural, horticultural and forage crop production.  Bees are well-known pollinators among insects but there has been concern about their decline due to the rise of globalization, changes in the geography, and application of new agriculture practices. As a result, diversification systems for pollinators and pest control are becoming increasingly crucial. After bees, syrphids are a noteworthy category of pollinators. Adult syrphids are significant pollinators with high floral visiting rates and pollen carrying capability, while young larvae serve as natural biological control agent (predator) to lower aphid numbers in the field. The vast majority of species are terrestrial, with only a few being aquatic or inhabiting exceptionally damp habitats. However, the larvae of various species inhabit diverse habitats where they act as predators of sucking pests (feeding upto 1200 aphids during this stage), as scavengers, as mycophagous insects and also survivors under heavily polluted water. Because of their diverse habitat, hover flies are less affected by urbanisation and modern agriculture. They are vital to humans because they have multiple beneficial roles as pollinators, biological control agents, decomposers and bioindicators. The inclusion of extra floral assets to the crop is another conservation biological control approach for encouraging an array of natural enemies encompassing predatory pollinators like hoverflies. Even so, picking of flower species is mostly dependant on visiting interests with inadequate consideration paid to the relationship among these helpful insects liking and performance as well.