Pictorial supplement to The Fifth Kingdom - Chapter 14

Fungi as agents of Biological Control
(23 pictures)
(CD-ROM has full text, 30 pictures and 2 video sequences)

(1) Control of animal pests by entomogenous fungi   

Biocontrol - a healthy spruce budworm larva which, when inoculated with Metarhizium anisopliae (Hyphomycetes)...

...dies and becomes covered with conidiophores of the fungus.

Biocontrol - a weevil killed by Metarhizium (Hyphomycetes)

Biocontrol - Hirsutella lecaniicola (Hyphomycetes) killing scale insects and producing synnematal conidiomata on them.

Biocontrol - "Mycar" myco-acaricide label. This is a commercially available preparation of Hirsutella thompsonii (Hyphomycetes).

Biocontrol - label for commercial preparation of Verticillium lecanii (Hyphomycetes), a mycoinsecticide.

Biocontrol - Akanthomyces aranearum (Hyphomycetes) producing synnematal conidiomata from its victim, a spider.

Biocontrol - Cordyceps sinclairii (Ascomycetes) fruiting on insect host.

Biocontrol - Entomophthora muscae (Zygomycetes) emerging from a fly it has killed.

Biocontrol - Phomopsis oblonga inoculation (right) reduces normal breeding (left) of the bark beetle which carries Dutch elm disease.

Biocontrol - one plant of Malva pusilla, a serious weed on the prairies in crops such as flax.

Biocontrol - experimental plots showing how application of spores of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides f.sp. malvae effectively kills the weed.

Biocontrol - C. gloeosporioides marketed under the name "Bio-Mal" as a biocontrol agent for Malva pusilla (round-leaved mallow).

Biocontrol - a dense stand of Acacia saligna, an alien plant introduced from Australia, smothering the native 'fynbos' vegetation in South Africa.

Biocontrol - application of a rust fungus, Uromycladium tepperianum, causes heavy gall formation and helps control the Acacia.

Biocontrol - Another Australian immigrant, Hakea sericea, causes similar problems in South Africa...

...and produces heavy crops of seeds...

...but in some places is naturally killed by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides.

Distribution of the Colletotrichum by helicopter...

...induces the disease.

Biocontrol - Tuberculina (lilac colour) parasitizing the uredinial stage (orange) of a Puccinia on Rubus.

Biocontrol - a section showing a darkly stained crust of Tuberculina overgrowing  a rust pustule (larger, roundish, red-stained spores).

Biocontrol - experimental control of Sclerotinia by Gliocladium virens and Coniothyrium minitum.  Sclerotia of the pathogen inoculated with the biocontrol fungi fail to produce apothecial ascomata.