Hemipteran predators: status, bio-ecology and rearing protocols

Insects have a wide variety of predators, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, carnivorous plants, and other arthropods. Predators occur in most orders of insects but primarily in the beetle, dragon-fly, lacewing, wasp and true bug families like Coleoptera, Odonata, Neuroptera, Hemiptera and Diptera, respectively. Hemiptera are the largest of the non-Endo pterygote orders, with more than 90,000 species coming under 140 families. Hemipteran predators feeding on plants known for some time, this character unable them to live even in the prey scarcity period. They are the facultative zoophytophagous nature and the mouth parts are adopted both for plant and prey feeding. While some plant-feeding heteropterans are agricultural pests, others are valued biocontrol agents in agricultural ecosystems (Weirauch and schuh, 2011).