Occurrence of entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi in oak wood soils from southern Italy

Abstract: The natural occurrence of entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi was investigated inoak wood soils from southern Italy using the Galleria baiting technique, from September 2005 toJune 2007. The sampling was performed in 160 different sites with 5 different oak species:Quercus ilex L., Q. trojana Webb., Q. cerris L., Q. frainetto Tenore and Q. pubescens Wild.Almost 16% of oak stands were positive for the presence of entomopathogenic nematodes:Steinernema feltiae (Filipjev, 1934) Wouts, Mráček, Gerdin and Bedding, 1982 and S. affine(Bovien, 1937) Wouts, Mráček, Gerdin and Bedding, 1982 were the species collected. S. affinewas the most common species. Parasitic fungi were obtained from 69 sites (43%). 3entomopathogenic species were recorded: Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin, the mostcommon species, Metarhizium anisopliae (Metchnikoff) and Paecilomyces lilacinus (Thom)Samson; Penicillium sp., Aspergillus sp. and Fusarium sp. (common species in soils with noentomopathogenic potential) were also isolated.