Win-win opportunities combining high yields with high multi-taxa biodiversity in tropical agroforestry.

Resolving ecological-economic trade-offs between biodiversity and yields is a key challenge when addressing the biodiversity crisis in tropical agricultural landscapes. Here, we focused on the relation between seven different taxa (trees, herbaceous plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, butterflies, and ants) and yields in vanilla agroforests in Madagascar. Agroforests established in forests supported overall 23% fewer species and 47% fewer endemic species than old-growth forests, and 14% fewer endemic species than forest fragments.

Host plant ranges of fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) in Madagascar.

Agriculture is one of the major farming activities, representing 32% of the gross domestic product of Madagascar and 74.3% of the population is involved in this activity. Fruit flies of the Tephritidae family are considered as the most destructive pests for agriculture in the country, nevertheless, few data exist on host plants and distribution of those pests.

Taxonomic revision of the genus of Madagascar (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Copelatinae): the non- group species.

The genus Erichson, 1832 (Coleoptera, Dytiscidae, Copelatinae) of Madagascar is revised in two parts. This review is restricted to the species that have fewer than ten elytral + one submarginal stria, including all species except those of the species group. Both morphological and molecular (mitochondrial COI) data are used in an integrative taxonomic approach.

Invasion by Bactrocera dorsalis and niche partitioning among tephritid species in Comoros.

Ten economically important species belonging to the Tephritidae have been recorded in Union of the Comoros (an island nation off the coast of East Africa). Little is known about the distribution of these species and how they are affected by climatic factors in the Comoros archipelago. The main objectives of this study were to characterize: (i) the population dynamics of tephritid fruit flies in relation to season and host fruit availability and (ii) the geographic distribution of tephritids in relation to temperature and rainfall.

Assessing hygienic behavior of Apis mellifera unicolor (Hymenoptera: Apidae), the endemic honey bee from Madagascar.

Hygienic behavior (HB) is one of the natural mechanisms of honey bee for limiting the spread of brood diseases and Varroa destructor parasitic mite. Objective of our study was to measure HB of Apis mellifera unicolor colonies (N = 403) from three geographic regions (one infested and two free of V. destructor) in Madagascar.