Tea, as one of the world’s most popular beverages and is an important cash crop that is cultivated worldwide 1, 2, 3, 4, with China, as the largest current producer 4.
The present study demonstrates the potential of our experimental approach to study predator-prey relationships in taxa that do not lend themselves to morphological identification of gut contents, such as spiders. Therefore, this spider may play a key role in pest suppression. The results showed that, in the field, the jumping spider Evarcha albaria was the most abundant, had the closest temporal overlap with the pest, and frequently fed on it. We analyzed DNA from 1363 individuals of the most common spider species using targeted RQ-PCR to quantify the potential efficiency of spiders as a predator on E. We collected 2655 spiders from plantations and established relative abundances of spider species and their temporal overlap with the pest species in tea canopy. Here we use a combination of various experimental approaches, both in field and lab, to identify a potential biological control species of the common pest of commercially grown tea, Empoasca vitis (Göthe) (Hemiptera), in a Chinese plantation. Molecular gut analysis can provide an estimation of predator efficiency on a given prey. Biological control using predators of key pest species is an attractive option in integrated pest management (IPM).