Constructing food‐web assemblages comprising parasitoid wasps involves large field collections of hosts followed by labour‐intensive rearing of the insects to evaluate the rates of parasitism along with morphological or molecular identification of the parasitoid species. This article presents research towards a new molecular method for the practical and accurate construction of aphid‐based food webs. We hypothesize that parasi...

RAPD‐PCR was used to determine the genetic variation of Metopolophium dirhodum collected in a winter wheat field and in a nearby 2.5‐m‐high suction trap at Lincoln, New Zealand. Over three collection dates, five distinct genotypes were identified, using two primers (OPK16 and OPC09) independently. There was a significant temporal effect on the ratio of genotypes in populations collected in the field. There was no significant s...