Europe lags far behind Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA in terms of implementing regulatory procedures for the import and release of invertebrate biological control agents (IBCAs). A number of standards, documents and guidelines have been produced over recent years in an attempt to harmonize regulation of IBCA introduction into Europe. Despite these efforts, the number of member countries implementing any form of IBCA regulation remains low, with many industries, biological practitioners and regulators fearing that a regulatory system would render the process of approval for IBCA introduction into a country costly and time consuming. Europe’s priority is therefore to formulate a regulatory system that will be readily approved of and adopted by all member countries. In this paper we review the current regulatory processes operating in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. There is potential for Europe to benefit from the years of experience that these countries have in IBCA regulation. We therefore propose recommendations based on features of the regulatory processes in each of the four countries that work well and that could be adopted to generate a workable Europe‐wide regulatory system.

Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was used to reveal gene diversity in exotic North American Coccinella Septempunctata populations. This lady beetle recently spread across the northern Nearctic. Sixteen of 28 putative loci were polymorphic; average gene diversity for all loci was 0.1598 ± 0.041. Gene frequencies were estimated at eight polymorphic loci in natural North American beetles from Arkansas, Delaware, lowa, Kansas, New York, Oregon, and Michigan. Also studied were F 2 beetles from four laboratory colonies that originated in Eurasia, along with field-collected beetles from France, Greece, and Sicily. Gene diversity among the Nearctic beetles was as great as that among the Palearctic beetles. Analysis of variance by Wright's method showed that only 29% of the variance in gene frequencies was between USDA cultures, Palearctic, and Nearctic beetles; 71% of the genetic variance was shared by beetles within the 21 subpopulations. No evidence of bottlenecks of drift was detected among the Nearctic subpopulations, and gene flow was essentially unrestricted.

The spectral sensitivity of the compound eyes of three age groups of both sexes of Coccinella septumpunctata L. was measured electrophysiologically at wavelengths of 350-700 nm. Both sexes in each group show two peaks of sensitivity, one at 365 nm and a second at 500 nm. Female beetles were slightly more sensitive than male beetles, but the difference was not significant. Beetles 29-33 d old were significantly more sensitive than younger (16-24 d) or older (38-42 d) beetles. KEY WORDS Insecta, Coccinella septempunctata, spectral sensitivity, vision Coccinella septempunctata (L.) is a European predator on several species of aphids and is now established in the eastern and central parts of North America (Schaeffer et al. 1987). This study on the beetles visual sensitivity was done to determine what colors they could detect that may be important in mating, food selection, and host plant detection.

Dinocampus coccinellae (Schrank) spent >80% of a 300-s observation period in host-handling activities (orienting toward, pursuing, and attacking hosts) when exposed to individual adult Coleomegilla maculata (DeGeer) or Coccinella septempunctata (L.). When D. coccinellae was exposed to two populations of Hippodamia variegata (Goeze) from Canada or France and Propylea quatuordecimpunctata (L.) from Canada or Turkey, host-handling activities decreased to <70% of 300 s. D. coccinellae oriented toward and attacked C. maculata and C. septempunctata in 10-12 s, compared with 18-38 s for H. variegata and P. quatuordecimpunctata. Additionally, C. maculata and C. septempunctata were attacked more frequently (mean = 3.3 and 2.6 in 300 s, respectively) than H. variegata or P. quatuordecimpunctata (mean = 2 and 1.5 in 300 s, respectively). No differences in D. coccinellae behavior were observed in response to the two H. variegata and two P. quatuordecimpunctata populations. D. coccinellae successfully emerged from 58% of C. maculata, 47% of C. septempunctata, 7-15% of H. variegata, and 1% of P. quatuordecimpunctata. Total mortality of adults exposed to D. coccinellae was 80% for C. maculata, 76% for C. septempunctata, 50% for H. variegata (France), 38% for H. variegata (Canada), and 11% for both P. quatuordecimpunctata populations. Based upon our observations, we expanded the description of D. coccinellae selection behavior to include orientation, which precedes forward motion toward a host.