Host Plant Trichome Architecture Mediates the Predatory Efficacies of Nesidiocoris tenuis and Chrysoperla carnea Against Tuta absoluta.

The tomato leafminer, Tuta absoluta, is a globally important pest that causes severe losses in tomato production, and effective biological control strategies are increasingly needed due to widespread insecticide resistance. The effectiveness of natural enemies is influenced by plant structural traits, such as trichomes, which create complex microhabitats that shape predator-prey interactions. Here, we compared the predatory performances, plant-level control efficacies, and predator-plant interactions of two widely used biological control agents, Nesidiocoris tenuis and Chrysoperla carnea, against T. absoluta eggs on tomato and eggplant. In laboratory assays, predation capacity increased with predator developmental stage, with adult female N. tenuis and third-instar larvae of C. carnea exhibiting the highest species-specific predation rates. However, in whole-plant and semi-enclosed cage experiments, N. tenuis maintained substantial foraging activity, effectively suppressing T. absoluta on tomato plants, whereas C. carnea showed limited control efficacy, with 86.7% of larvae abandoning plants within 24 h. Conversely, C. carnea exhibited significantly higher predation rates than N. tenuis on eggplant, with minimal abandonment. Comparing plant surface architectures revealed that tomato leaves possessed substantially longer trichomes than eggplant leaves (4.14 vs. 0.48 mm), which restricted the foraging activity of C. carnea. Our results indicated that N. tenuis remains the preferable agent for tomato, while C. carnea is highly suitable for short-trichome-bearing solanaceous crops like eggplant. Crop surface characteristics strongly influence biological control effectiveness, and matching predator traits with crop architecture will improve the success of natural enemy-based pest management.