Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Royal Entomological Society Journal Awards.
Ecological Entomology is a leading journal focusing on original research concerning insects and related invertebrates’ ecology.
Aimed at ecologists driven by ecological or evolutionary theory, the journal prioritizes innovative contributions testing specific hypotheses. Ecological Entomology publishes full-length Original Articles, Reviews, Short Communications, and Methods papers, all intended to advance the field of ecological entomology.
Ecological Entomology Winner
Bijay Subedi: Salicylate plant defences reduce aphid nutritional quality and increase predator consumption 50.5
Bijay Subedi, with his defence experiment. Image Credit: Bijay Subedi
Bijay Subedi earned his PhD in Entomology at Penn State University in Spring 2026. His research examines how plant stress and defence signalling reshape interactions between plants, herbivores, and natural enemies. Using plant–aphid–carnivore systems, he takes a multitrophic approach to ask how changes in plant condition alter both resource flow, such as herbivore performance and prey quality, and information flow, such as the cues predators use to find prey.
His work combines greenhouse, laboratory, and field experiments to understand how these mechanisms scale up to affect biological control and food-web structure. The featured paper fits within this broader framework by showing that salicylic acid-mediated defence changes not only aphid performance, but also aphid value as prey, with consequences for predator feeding and pest suppression.
“This exciting paper uses carefully controlled experiments to shift the focus of tri-trophic interactions from the effects of plant defences on herbivore abundance, to how defences shape the nutritional quality of aphids, and how this changes the behaviour of their predators. This shift takes a nutritional ecology approach to examine how nutrients flow through a system, showing that defended plants resulted in smaller aphids with lower protein and lipid content relative to glucose. In response, ladybirds consumed more of these prey, potentially to compensate for the low-quality meal.
There was a potential cascading effect where bottom-up plant defences and top-down predation work together, with implications for biological control of pests.“
– Judges’ comments
Ladybird aphid interaction.
Photo Credit: Guilherme Becker
This paper explores how activated plant defences reduce aphid quality, producing smaller and less nutrient-rich prey. In his study, Subedi found that ladybirds responded by consuming more aphids, resulting in stronger suppression of aphid populations.
The findings show that plant defence can act both directly, by reducing pest performance, and indirectly, by enhancing predator impact. This highlights the potential of defence activation as a more sustainable approach to pest management.
